Five years ago, on a visit to the Pacific Tsunami Museum in Hilo, Hawaii, I played an interesting simulation game: setting off an undersea earthquake and deciding whether or not to issue a tsunami warning to the many countries in and around the Pacific.

The volunteer-run museum, based in ‘the tsunami capital of the world’, engages visitors on the science, history and sociology of tsunamis. The exhibits are mostly mechanical or use basic electronic displays, but the messages are carefully thought out.

The game allowed me to imagine being Director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC), a US government scientific facility in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, where geophysicists monitor seismic activity round the clock. When the magnitude exceeds 7.5, its epicentre is located and a tsunami watch is set up. Then, combining the seismic, sea level and historical data, PTWC decides if it should be upped to a warning.

The museum game allows players to choose one of three locations where an earthquake happens — Alaska, Chile or Japan — and also decide on its magnitude from 6.0 to 8.5 on the Richter Scale.

This is an instance where scientists must quickly process large volumes of information and add their own judgement to the mix. With rapid onset hazards like tsunamis, every second counts. Delays or inaction can be costly — but false alarms don’t come cheap either.

I played the game thrice, and erring on the side of caution, issued a local (Hawaiian) evacuation every time. If it were for real, that would have caused chaos and cost the islanders a lot of money.

In fact, those who make decisions on tsunami alerts or warnings have to take many factors into account – including safety, economic impact and even political fall-out.

PTWC is only an expert facility that recommends action: countries covered by its technical advisories are left to make their own national decisions. Depending on local circumstances and considerations, they may act on it immediately – or decide to wait and see.

After playing the simulation game, I can better appreciate the predicament government officials who shoulder this responsibility. They walk a tight rope, balancing short-term public safety and long term public trust in the entire early warning system.

“Tsunami prediction is an inexact art practised in conditions of imperfect information and time pressure,” says Dr Rohan Samarajiva, head of the regional think tank LIRNEasia and a former telecom regulator in Sri Lanka. “In the Pacific Basin, which has had the most experience with tsunamis, 75 per cent of all warnings are false.  But this causes little harm because the false warnings do not get through to the general population for the most part.”

Indian Ocean tsunamis

In contrast, countries in the Indian Ocean have less than a decade’s experience in dealing with tsunamis. There may have been killer waves in historical times, but modern memories begin with the devastating tsunami of 26 December 2004.

On that fateful day, PTWC detected and warned about it, but most countries in South and Southeast Asia lacked national decision making capacity and public warning systems to act on it quickly and resolutely. As a result, than 250,000 lives were lost.

Those memories no doubt played a big role on 11 April 2012, following a powerful undersea earthquake, government officials in many Indian Ocean rim countries agonised over the right response. To warn or not to warn — that was the question.

The 8.6 magnitude quake occurred at 8.38 UTC (14:08 Sri Lanka Time), 440 km southwest of Banda Aceh in Indonesia and 33 km beneath the ocean floor. That was relatively close to the location from where the December 2004 tsunami originated.

PTWC issued its first information bulletin six minutes after the 4/11 quake. It introduced an Indian Ocean-wide Tsunami Watch, recommending a state of readiness to act, covering 28 countries and territories.

Over the next few hours, they updated their assessment, but didn’t escalate the tsunami watch to a tsunami warning, as only minor tsunamis were generated during the aftermath. At 12:36 UCT (18:06 SL Time), they called off the tsunami watch.

This time around, the Indian Ocean had its own tsunami early warning system, set up under the UN Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) following the 2004 tragedy.

Anchored around three early warning providers – operated by Australia, India and Indonesia – the Indian Ocean system combines data from underwater probes, orbiting global positioning system satellites and floating buoys to better detect a coming tidal wave.

On April 11, individual Indian Ocean countries reacted differently. Indonesia issued a warning five minutes after the quake. India’s was in eight minutes, and Australia’s, in 10. Several others issued warnings; some followed it up with coastal evacuation.

According to news reports, Thai authorities shut down the Phuket international airport, and evacuated hotel guests in the coastal resort area to the hills behind. In southern India, meanwhile, the port of Chennai closed down for a few hours. These were among the locations badly hit in 2004.

Sri Lanka’s official warning and coastal evacuation order came around 15:30 SL Time, issued by the Department of Meteorology and released to the media and public by the Disaster Management Centre (DMC).

If a trans-oceanic tsunami was indeed generated, it would have reached Sri Lanka’s east coast (Trincomalee) in just over two hours from the quake. So the window to act was tight – but long enough for coastal evacuation.

But there was considerable chaos just before and after the official warning. The undersea quake itself was felt almost instantaneously in many parts of Sri Lanka as a mild tremours, physically alerting people about the Indian Ocean’s rumble. Within minutes, at least two dozen radio and TV channels were in ‘Breaking News’ mode. The online social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter also exploded with citizen updates, opinions and emotions.

In the absence of a steady flow of official information, radio and TV kept repeating whatever they found online. Not all of it was drawn from credible or trusted sources. That, combined with inexperience of some announcers, contributed to public confusion.

“An ignorant public at a time chaos is not a good thing,” says journalist Amantha Perera, who reports from Sri Lanka for global media outlets including TIME Magazine. “There was also massive confusion: the government said it was a tsunami warning and got people out of the coast, but there was no follow-up information coming from official channels, which really led to chaos.”

Individual agencies acting in isolation belied the absence of a coordinated response strategy. Buses and train services were stopped on the coastal lines. Electricity supply was shut down in certain coastal areas. Public and private offices were closed early, with thousands of workers suddenly asked go home.

Dr Samarajiva sees these as “a disorganised random set of responses uninformed either by realistic assessments of the risk (exemplified by the model predicting arrival times) or by definitive guidance from the government.”

In a post mortem, he adds: “When it came to issuance of warnings, evacuation orders, etc., the government earned a failing grade. Not enough authoritative direction was provided in time.” (full text at: http://tiny.cc/RS411).

Fear and Panic

Journalist Amantha Perera felt that most mass decisions that day were motivated by fear. “Media, government and others did not do anything to keep the people clam and informed – telling them the situation was under control…it appeared no one was in charge, at least when it came to  keeping the public informed after the warning.”

He adds: “There was also no firm authoritative figure who came out and assured the people. [In contrast] we saw what the Indonesian president did: when it became very clear that a tsunami was unlikely, he was the one who assured the country.”

We also found the limits of early warning technology. Post-quake overloading of telecom networks was predictable. More worrying was how the DMC’s arrangement for cell broadcasting – a method that can send text messages simultaneously to a large number of mobile phone users in a given area – failed. Two weeks later, that has yet to be explained.

At least 10 coastal warning towers – built after 2004 with foreign aid – also didn’t work. This is being investigated and remedial action has been promised.

Thorkild Aarup, Head of the Tsunami Unit of the UN Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), has acknowledged gaps in the Indian Ocean system.

Speaking within hours of the April 11 incident, he said: “But the Indian Ocean is much better prepared than it was in 2004. The tsunami early warning systems are like the atmospheric systems used by meteorologists which are constantly being improved by new technology. The same is true for the tsunami warning systems”.

In the end, the problems have less to do with specific technologies of monitoring and data gathering, and more rooted in the human systems of decision making and crisis response. The biggest challenge, for national authorities, is how to make the best possible decisions on the run, under immense pressure, and often with incomplete information.

Here too, the Indian Ocean can learn a few things from the Pacific experience. Since the system was set up in 1947, it has never missed warning of a damaging tsunami — but there have been a number of very expensive evacuations that turned out to be unnecessary.

“These precautions are needed to ensure public safety, but scientists are working to minimise unnecessary warnings without ever missing a hazardous event,” explains one panel at the Pacific Tsunami Museum.

Easier said than done! As Dr Samarajiva says: “Disaster risk-reduction professionals know that false warnings are an artefact of the inexact art of predicting the onset of hazards: but the general public does not.  If they are subject to too many false warnings, they will not respond even to true warnings.”

Too much of a good thing?

So was the tsunami warning and coastal evacuation on April 11 justified? This needs careful, dispassionate analysis in the coming weeks.

“Better safe than sorry” might work the first few times, but let us remember the cry-wolf syndrome. False alarms and evacuation orders can reduce public trust and cooperation over time.

Public behaviour – in both good times and bad — is a composite phenomenon made up of millions of individual citizens making private decisions in their self interest. While many heed their ‘herd instinct’ during emergencies, some can — and do — refuse due to their own reasoning. People can’t be saved at gun point.

A case in point is what happened in southern Bangladesh in November 2007 as cyclone Sidr approached. A false tsunami alert and evacuation two months earlier (on 13 September 2007) had led thousands of Bangladeshis to ignore cyclone early warnings. As villagers and officials later admitted, this accounted for many of the over 1,000 lives that were lost to the cyclone.

On the whole, Bangladesh is an outstanding success story in community based early warning systems – it saves thousands of lives from cyclones that regularly hit the deltaic country. But as the Sidr experience showed, too much of a good thing can be harmful.

The rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) introduces a new dimension to emergencies. The multiplicity of information sources, channels and access devices is certainly better than their absence. But they also make it harder to achieve a coherent and coordinated response. Controlled release of information is no longer an option for any government.

During those tensed hours on April 11, it is likely that many of the 15 to 20 per cent of Lankans with web access went online to look up and/or share information. We saw the power of social media: in a spontaneous collaboration, several regular Twitter users (tweeps) stayed active throughout the period.

Tweets not only updated on what was happening in Colombo and other coastal areas, but also relayed latest news from established wire news services (such as AP and Reuters) and mainstream media in Sri Lanka. When some radio broadcasts were creating panic, tweets pointed out that at first, it was a tsunami watch — not a warning.

In contrast, the official websites of the DMC  and the Met Department had no updates for at least 90 minutes after the quake.

As I noted in another recent essay, we can’t expect state agencies to become twitter-happy overnight (although timely updates of their websites would be a good idea). At a minimum, they must realise the info landscape is now transformed.

“If we don’t get the language and communication right, greater use of (social) media can actually aggravate confusion and chaos,” cautions Sanjana Hattotuwa, one of several Lankans who covered April 11 crisis on twitter, from @groundviews.

For a start, everyone needs to discern a tsunami WATCH (stand-by for more) from a WARNING (take action). Many – including some journalists – still don’t appreciate the difference. It is even more confusing when hastily translated into local languages.

A simple and language-neutral colour code system can help. As I’ve been saying, why not adopt the well known hierarchy of green–amber–red, already well known in traffic lights?

Yes, we have come a long way since 2004. But we still face many challenges, now of a different kind. A little learning can be dangerous. Patchy awareness – combined with fear and rumours — can easily trigger panic.

Disaster early warnings are pure public goods. But in our modern information societies, each member of the public must decide what is good for them. Public trust is the lubricant that will move the wheels of law and order as well as public safety in the right direction.

Science writer Nalaka Gunawardene has been covering disasters as a journalist and film maker for over 20 years. In 2007, he co-edited Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book. 

• Sri Lanka on tsunami alert after Indonesia quake (Updated)
• Better Governance: The Biggest Lesson of 2004 Tsunami
• A botched Tsunami Early Warning test – Lessons for the future
• A photo story: Five years on, forgotten victims of the tsunami
• DON’T PANIC! Predicting earthquakes or triggering mass hysteria?

Admirably, the Government was kind and open enough to provide a live web feed of the proceedings of the three day Defeating Terrorism: Sri Lankan Experience seminar, held in Colombo. This allowed for non-invitees and non-participants like us to monitor the saccharine presentations via the web, flagging inconsistencies as well as inconvenient truths that were unsurprisingly left out or marginalised in the proceedings.

Often tongue-in-cheek but flagging serious issues and concerns, our updates over Twitter and on this site were anchored to content presented at the seminar by a range of government and army representatives. We published a key address by Australian counter-terrorism expert David Kilcullen on Day One and, given it’s official stance, rather surprising comments by the US Embassy’s Defence Attache on Day Two. On day three, the final day of the seminar, we listened in real time to the presentations by Ajith Nivard Cabraal, Governor of the Central Bank, Lalith Weeratunge, Permanent Secretary to the President of Sri Lanka and Chairman of the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission and the closing remarks of the seminar by Rohan Gunaratna, who according to Wikipedia is “an international terrorism expert”.

Most of our live tweeting occurred today listening to these presentations, where we pointed out the divide between what was presented and the reality on the ground plus stories and information that placed in context some of the false or misleading assertions that were made, particularly regarding economic development, the use and spread of ICTs, the rehabilitation of former LTTE cadre and the conditions in Menik Farm immediately after the war.

All our updates are presented below for easy reference. We also did a screencast of the video presentation made today on the Sri Lankan army’s contributions to UN Peacekeeping missions.

• Northern Local Government Elections
• How Sri Lanka Defeated Terrorism, Defence Seminar: Observations from a participant
• Post-election updates from Colombo
• US Defence Attache’s observations on the end of war in Sri Lanka (Updated with US State Department response)
• History is Irreversible – A ‘Postmortem’ on the Seminar, “Defeating Terrorism: Sri Lankan Experience”

I was elated to take delivery of my copy of The Cage by Gordon Weiss yesterday. Having pre-ordered it off Amazon UK, I fully expected it to be held up by Customs officials in Sri Lanka, given the incendiary issues the book is anchored to and its author, an erstwhile employee of the United Nations (UN) in Sri Lanka. As a friend quipped, they probably thought it had something to do with the Dehiwela Zoo. This may be true for now, but it is highly unlikely, in a country that has repeatedly even blocked issues of The Economist with articles perceived to be against the incumbent government, that this tome will be freely sold in bookstores.

The publication and release of The Cage comes soon after the hugely controversial and deeply distressing report by the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts, which found credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by both the LTTE and government armed forces in the final months and weeks of the war. Just today, no more than 24 hours after I first picked up this book, Kumaran Pathmanathan (alias KP), the former head of the LTTE’s arms procurement department, said in the media that the UN and West were prepared to send in a ship to rescue LTTE leaders towards the fag end of the war[1].  As I sit down to write this, the sonic booms of Kfir jets over Colombo, once a familiar sound, herald preparations for the second anniversary of the end of war. Last year, the President proclaimed that the armed forces did not kill a single civilian and that they “carried a gun in one hand and a copy of the human rights charter in the other”. It is a powerful fiction – simply told and sadly, simply believed. A few days hence, this compelling fiction will drive the proceedings of an international seminar, organised by the armed forces, aimed to share the government’s unique ‘mojo’ of defeating terrorism with the rest of the world[2].

The Cage is a page-turner. Gordon’s prose is lucid and compelling. This is not a book you can easily put down once picked up. There are around 60 pages of notes and background reference material – Weiss has clearly done his homework. The book is anchored to the final few weeks of war, but holds lessons more broadly applicable, and covers issues as diverse as geo-politics and international relations to international humanitarian law and its application in the Sri Lankan context. Weiss is also clearly well versed in the art of communication – for example, demonstrating a rare insight into how to humanise a large tragedy, he compares throughout the book the size of the sand spit where the war ended and tens of thousands of civilians were trapped in to the size of New York’s Central Park, London or Hampstead Heath. This is powerful writing, because it communicates far more effectively the cramped landmass than any figure in square kilometres or miles can.

As I read the book cover to cover in a matter of hours, it reminded me so much of another book – David Blacker’s A Cause Untrue, first published around 2005. As I noted in a review of A Cause Untrue,

“the strength of Blacker’s writing is that it is hugely believable. We know we are reading a work of fiction, but the familiar names, places, incidents – all serve to sharpen the illusion of reality. Intense, thrilling and intoxicating – the Schumacher pace of this book fuels the careening progress of its plot. The thrill, primarily, is in reading the fictional accounts of familiar actors– the Government of Sri Lanka, the Special Forces of the Army, the LTTE etc.”

Weiss does not intend his book to be perceived or judged as fiction. It invariably will be by many. The comparison between Blacker and Weiss is perhaps unfair, but with certain merits. Both books deal with Sri Lanka’s 30-year-old war that ended decisively in May 2009. Both portray, albeit very differently, the Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam (LTTE), which at its zenith was one of the most ruthless terrorist groups in the world. Blacker’s fiction renders operatives of the Sri Lankan armed forces like Fleming’s Bond – as suave, raffish international operators. In contrast, many accounts of the armed forces in The Cage are ferociously barbaric, visceral. Just as much as I observed that Blacker’s work intersperses the real with the fictional, many sections of government, the armed forces and even the UN in Sri Lanka and New York will see Weiss as a talented but tainted author of a book that isn’t pegged to any evidence on the ground.

Sadly, some of the irresponsibly written and edited content in The Cage will support this response. Weiss notes that his first introduction to Gotabaya Rajapaksa – who is featured extensively in the book – was just after the suicide attack against him in December 2006[3], stating that it was a Mercedes that saved his life. It was in fact an armour plated BMW 7 Series that saved Gotabaya’s life and ironically, one that the former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge imported to Sri Lanka[4]. On page 6, Weiss notes that on the day Prabakaran’s death was announced through the media, “there was little of the air of celebration one might have expected at the end of such an epoch”. I do not know which part of the country Weiss was at this time but it was one big, riotous party in and around Colombo on the 18^th of May[5] and extending for the most part of a week. On page 145, Weiss asserts that Sri Lanka’s current Foreign Minister, G.L. Peiris, was in May 2010 the Attorney General. He never was – Weiss confuses Mohan Peiris with G.L.  Peiris. There are other revealing ambiguities, over for example the portrayal of the Sri Lankan armed forces. On Page 180, quoting an article that appeared in the Hindustan Times by Suthirto Patranobis, Weiss avers that an ‘unnamed Indian doctor’ said the true death toll had been ‘brushed under the carpet’. Weiss could have researched this better. The Indian doctor does in fact have a name – he was Dr. Tathagata Bose, and before the Hindustan Times report, the first we heard of his observations treating those coming out of the war zone was on Groundviews, where he said “If an infant could not be protected, imagine the plight of older children and adults. The so-called ‘Sri Lankan Solution’ being touted as the panacea for dealing with terrorism worldwide needs a thorough relook.”[6] Page 186 is nearly entirely devoted to high praise of Sri Lankan doctors working in the front-lines during the end of war in horrific conditions and the kindness of front-line soldiers. As Weiss avers,

“During the course of research for this book, dozens of Tamils described the Sinhalese as inherently kind and gentle people. The front-line soldiers who received the first civilians as they escaped to government lines, those who guarded them in the camps and the civilian and military doctors who provided vital treatment distinguished themselves most commonly through their mercy and care.”

Further on in the book, Weiss gives examples of soldiers who tried their utmost to distinguish between LTTE combatants and civilians in incredibly confusing and stressful ground conditions, gave up their own rations to feed those who were dying of hunger in the internment camps established by the government just after the war and other incredible stories of compassion and mercy towards injured Tamil civilians – mothers, children, infants and men – in the hellish last weeks and days of war. This ostensibly echoes what for example Brigadier Prasanna de Silva from the 55^th Division says in the film directed by Guy Guneratne The Truth That Wasn’t There[7]. However, Weiss also then unequivocally asserts that “this does not mean that soldiers did not directly kill thousands of civilians in the heat of combat” and notes that “… Survivors testify that advancing soldiers lobbed grenades methodically into bunkers that often held civilians.” Gordon’s attempt to portray the armed forces through a wide-angled lens of complex emotional, psychosomatic and combat responses to war is commendable, and indeed, more rounded than what most other writers, including those in civil society, have penned to date. It is sadly a leitmotif left abandoned in the book. Weiss offers no larger analysis of this tragic fragmentation between spontaneous compassion and calculated mass scale atrocity, and its affects on the civilians caught in direct or cross-fire.

Sections of The Cage therefore will be flagged as authentic by government, most other passages, violently derided as conspiratorial fiction. Unsurprisingly, given the reaction to the UN Secretary General’s report, the sections the government will be most upset by and why this book will never be openly sold in Sri Lanka will be those dealing with ground conditions in the Vanni from around January to May 2009 in particular, plus the content on page 225, dealing with the assassination of the LTTE’s leadership even after the conditions and path of surrender had been worked out with those in government.

The vociferous support of the UN Secretary General’s report by many sections of the pro-LTTE Tamil diaspora is pegged to its repeated and deep consternation over instances where government armed forces actively targeted civilians. What the UN report also makes explicitly clear and Weiss in The Cage repeatedly underscores are the unimaginably barbaric actions of the LTTE “to fire artillery into their own people” based on “the terrible calculation that with enough dead Tamils, a toll would eventually be reached that would lead to international outrage and intervention.” Here’s the rub – with their leadership decimated, there’s no one in the LTTE to hold accountable.

Not so with the armed forces.

Chapter Five (Convoy 11) is a damning indictment of the Sri Lankan armed forces. Weiss quotes at length eye witness testimony and the experiences of two military men – retired colonel Harun Khan from Bangladesh and the UN’s security chief Chris Du Toit from South Africa, also a retired colonel. The chapter is based on their experience of accompanying the 11^th WFP food convoy into the Vanni. It is a mind-numbingly harrowing account of violence that supports what the UN Panel of Experts says are credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Weiss takes pains to emphasise that the appalling details are based on reports by two men who each had significant experience in active combat. Throughout the chapter it is made very clear that the Sri Lankan armed forces were driven by the single-minded pursuit of decimating the LTTE. As Weiss notes regarding the establishment of the so-called No Fire Zones (NFZs), “The decision to unilaterally declare an NFZ in that particular location, hard up against an unpredictable and eroding front line had little to do with protecting civilian lives and everything to do with their removal as an obstacle to unrestrained firepower” and goes to say that “… it was reckless and dangerous strategy that had everything to do with political expediency and little to do with the duty of care owed by the government to civilians. It also said much about how the Sri Lankan leadership valued the lives of the ‘Tiger’ civilian population”. The Sri Lankan armed forces, in sum had towards the end of war become a mirror image of the terrorist group they were fighting against. Pages 116 – 120 are, simply put, difficult to digest even after reading the macabre details published in the UN’s own report and others from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Weiss speaks of photographic evidence of the carnage taken by Col. Khan, but there is none to be found in the book itself. Dismembered babies may have been too gruesome to include in the tome, but are photographic evidence of the deliberate targeting of civilians. Weiss does not say who has these photos, but we can assume, amongst others, the UN does. The Cage goes on to deal with what is now, sadly, the well-known shelling of the PTK hospital guided by what Weiss claims “to be the result of a frantic SLA push to seize the town before Sri Lanka’s annual independence celebrations on 4 February”. On page 133 Weiss calls out the mentality of the government and the armed forces towards the end of the war, which believed “that the failure of civilians to make the perilous crossing of the front lines in effect amounted to complicity with the tactics of the Tamil Tigers.”

The Cage then, though in form different to the UN Panel’s report, supports the same significant concerns over war crimes committed by the armed forces and the LTTE. There is however one other development that arises from this book’s publication when juxtaposed with the official version of the UN Panel’s report, released late April. The justifiable caution over and confidentiality of sources in the UN Panel’s report is ruined by the revelations in The Cage, attributed by Weiss to specific individuals.  Pages 23 to 24 of the UN Panel’s report, in particular sections 83 – 89, also deals with Convoy 11’s experience. No names of the sources however are given. After reading The Cage, it is a matter of simple extrapolation that the sources were in fact Col. Khan and Col. Du Toit. It is unclear how the UN itself will respond. Weiss makes it clear that those accounts that are attributed to individuals was done with explicit permission. The situation reports they would have submitted to WFP and other UN agencies would obviously have informed the Panel’s report. What Weiss has unwittingly done here is to add fuel to the government’s propaganda machine and its most vicious, voluble proponents. It also runs counter to the author’s own assertion (page xxix) that he has done his best “… to interpret and use publicly available information, and has not drawn on confidential correspondence or internal reports, discussions…”. I pride myself on being rather well informed about what is in the public domain dealing with the end of war, but cannot once recall or find any record of what Du Toit or Kahn refer to in The Cage outside of the book, or published anywhere before it.

Annoyingly, The Cage also features the off-handish inclusion of disturbing allegations. On Page 211, Weiss passingly mentions the use of phosphorus shells exploding amongst civilians. This is in fact an extremely serious allegation, and though it has also been reiterated in Tamil media in Sri Lanka, it is one that the government and the armed forces have vehemently denied[8].

That said, The Cage is much more than the narration of carnage so violent, that it defies easy comprehension. Weiss’s book is an attempt to contextualise this violence in the history and ethno-politics of Sri Lanka, and here he succeeds better than most. Weiss calls himself ‘an informed observer’ early on in the book. At the beginning he asks several questions – and vital ones at that – on whether the Sri Lankan government had any alternative to what they ended up doing to end the war. This book is a scathing critique of what the author sees, and those like Louse Arbour also agree as the UN’s “complicity with evil”, but no more so than the report by the UN Secretary General himself. Some soul-searching has been promised, but it is clear that it will take time and will involve problematic investigations into the culpability of highly placed officials in the Secretary General’s cabinet, the resident representative of the UN in Sri Lanka at the time and heads of other UN agencies. The strongest condemnation however is directed at the armed forces and government. Weiss on page 145 (and again on page 197) offers an alternative denouement to the war, though noting that it is now impossible to determine how the government would have reacted to a UN system more proactive in its condemnation of civilian deaths. The alternative proposed by Weiss is interesting reading, but utterly divorced from the (Sinhalese) mentality and sheer hatred of the LTTE that drove government and the armed forces, who having whiffed the decisive end to the war through the decimation of the group’s leadership, weren’t interested in anything or anyone that stood in their way.

Tellingly, the resulting gory and for example the unearthly conditions of Menik Farm remain, at best, of peripheral interest to the majority in Sri Lanka. They are issues and people out of sight, out of mind. The Cage will have about as much impact in Sri Lanka as banning issues of The Economist. Dozens of copies of the book will invariably make its way into Sri Lanka. Much like my own copy, they will be passed on from hand to hand to inform a few concerned about war crimes allegations and are in favour of robust, independent investigations into such allegations. Internationally, The Cage will guarantee it’s author a slot in the literary festivals circuit (sans the Galle Literary Festival) for the next year at least, coupled with media interviews, reviews such as this and op-eds to plug the book – all of which will keep the spotlight on Sri Lanka’s tryst with war crimes. Will this result in any demonstrable change in Sri Lanka? I think not.

If anything, The Cage is more than a disturbing scrutiny of the final phase of war.  Weiss also flags in some detail a corrupt, dysfunctional judiciary and the erosion of democratic governance, even before the 18^th Amendment. In highlighting the murder of the fifteen aid workers in 2006, Weiss underscores what Amnesty International has also clearly flagged – no commission of inquiry or process of investigation into killings that have involved the State has brought the perpetrators to book. The Cage looks the significant role China played in the guarding Sri Lanka against UN condemnation and sanctions both in Geneva and at the Security Council in New York as well as supplying the armed forces with weapons. The author places Sri Lanka centre and forward in the new ‘Beijing Consensus’, and sees China’s complicity with the war’s end as the building block of deep and lasting economic partnerships over the coming years. The considered position of an informed observer gives Weiss a unique vantage to see how the systemic decay within Sri Lanka, coupled with the shift of geo-political advantage to the East in international fora played into the carnage in the Vanni.

For me, it was a single sentence in The Cage that captured the tragedy of war’s end, and how it has so violently defined our country. It wasn’t anything to do with the effects of shelling and shooting point blank children, lactating mothers or the elderly. It wasn’t about the entrails that adorned burning landscapes after the shelling ended. It wasn’t in fact anything to do with the violence rent by arms. Page 185 deals with how even in sheer destitution and despair, civilians in makeshift camps sandwiched between the armed forces and LTTE tried to make the most of their perilous condition. Weiss notes that ,

“There was a shortage of material for everything, and people were compelled to use their colourful, expensive wedding saris, which usually handed down from mother to daughter.”

For most Sri Lankans and especially for Tamils, this is an image extremely resonant and more than a little saddening. This tragic loss of dignity and identity to just survive through the night are not wounds that heal easily. This loss of what it means to be human is not regained by the year on year growth of GDP or the increasing influx of tourists. During the war, the government perceived all Tamils as LTTE, even in Colombo[9]. After the war, nothing – nothing at all – of what the government has done meaningfully addresses legitimate grievances that gave rise to the heinous entity that was the LTTE. From the violence of the 18^th Amendment to that of government ministers in Jaffna[10], the treatment of those interned in Menik Farm, the wasteful and outrageously insensitive celebrations over the second term of the President[11], the millions of dollars the government spend son bids for the Commonwealth Games and entities like Bell Pottinger to whitewash its name[12] and yet can’t spend on those uplifting the livelihoods of those most affected by war, including families of armed forces personnel killed or MIA – these and so much more of what the Rajapaksa regime does suggests we are all hostage in a cage much larger than what Weiss flags in his book, and arguably harder to fight against and escape from. The necessary opiate to keep inconvenient questions and truths away from public scrutiny remains a language of hate and harm – viciously denying, decrying, defiling and denouncing anyone, in Sri Lanka or outside, who questions the President’s assertion, parroted by his brothers, government and unprincipled schmucks in the UNP that no war crimes were committed by our armed forces.

In January 2010, the discerning Sri Lankan voter faced a horrible choice in selecting a viable post-war President. Equally egotistical and megalomaniacal, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka represented the girders of this larger cage. One won, the other lost more than expected, but indirectly or directly, they are both responsible for allegations of war crimes and crimes of mass atrocity against our own people. These are allegations that will certainly not result in any quick regime change, but are as unlikely to ever fade away. They will keep coming back, again and again and again. Until and unless there is a meaningful process of truth-seeking and truth-telling, we risk losing out on the verdant democratic potential of our country post-war and a descent into what Weiss ominously notes in the final sentence of The Cage as a “tyranny where myth-making, identity whitewashing and political opportunism have defeated justice and individual dignity.”

The Cage is published by Bodley Head, Random House and available at the time of writing on Amazon UK.

• When allegations become evidence
• A robust debate on No Fire Zones (NFZs) and International Humanitarian Law: Artful dodging of war crimes in Sri Lanka?
• The cynical manipulation of international law: Murdering civilians in No Fire Zones and other war crimes allegations
• Exclusive interview with Callum McCrae, Director of ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ produced by Channel 4
• Opposition to the UN Panel report: Any method to this madness?

Australian nurse, filmmaker and author Alison Thompson is making a name for herself, selflessly volunteering to help in dangerous global calamities, such as in the aftermath of the 2004 Asian Tsunami – and now in Haiti.

When the Haiti earthquake struck in January 2010, her buddy, two-time Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn (who had previously backed her Third Wave film about the Tsunami in Sri Lanka) asked if she was interested in joining him in an important Haiti relief effort.

Alison and Sean have been working together in Haiti ever since then, setting up their own NGO’s and making a very real difference to relieve the Haitian people’s suffering. Both have received awards for their efforts.

Alison was awarded the (OAM) Medal of the Order of Australia (general division), while Sean was awarded the Hollywood Humanitarian Honor for his work in Haiti.

This from a letter Alison wrote to her parents from the field in Haiti:

Dear Mum and Dad,

I am lying in my tent in Haiti, typing on my iPhone under a flashlight.

How can I tell you about the things I have seen without making you cry into your cereal? I’ll spare you the details of babies dying in their own vomit, but I will tell you that after our first night at St. Mark’s Hospital our medical team broke down and cried, helpless at not being able to save everyone. Out here you are only as good as your last prayer, and God’s inbox is backed up.

My interview with Alison took place early this year.

Can you please give us a brief description about the work that you’ve been doing in Haiti since the earthquake and tell us a bit about weadvance.org and what its aims are?
A few days after the disaster struck Haiti, I flew there with actor Sean Penn and ten doctors to see if we could help for a few weeks. We found ourselves in charge of a busy field hospital (which I ran for the first 5 months) and an IDP camp with over 65,000 people in it. Sean quickly became the camp manager and started an NGO called jphro.org to help get donations to look after the people. After leaving JPHRO I co-founded weadvance.org with actress Maria Bello and lawyer Aleda Frishman. We build and open women’s clinics around Port-au -Prince and help empower women to claim back their rights and lives. Our plans are to bring all of Haiti’s women’s groups together to form a powerful union of women caring for women and protecting their human rights.

Right now we have a new clinic in Cite Soleil, which I think is amongst some of the most dangerous and worst slums in the world, but I love it there and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Can you describe the great stoicism of the Haitian people you’ve witnessed since being in Haiti?
The Haitian people have had plague after plague thrown at them with earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, cholera, malaria, TB, diphtheria, corrupt elections… and the list goes on. But they still stand strong and they are very spiritual people. They have learned to live with next to nothing and in some of the worst conditions I have ever seen anywhere in this world. I see an 80-year-old woman looking after 60 orphans by herself under tarps. I see orphans living in the dirt with maggots and worms coming out of their ears — but who manage to survive with the help of older orphans (aged 9-12) looking after them. I see women with amputated legs and arms still looking after their 6 kids. We could learn so much from the strength of the Haitian people.

What have been some of the success stories to happen in Haiti since the disaster?
The success stories are the individual volunteers and the small charities and NGO’s who are not stuck in red-tape and bureaucracy, and who don’t try to do too much but end up getting a hell of a lot done. Globaldirt.org is a great example and also grassrootsunited.org and jphro.org.

What have been some of the failures to happen in Haiti since the disaster?
The failures are the large world-famous NGO’s we all know who are holding onto the money and aid and who have become so large they are stuck in their own red-tape and bureaucracy. It’s really embarrassing and shameful. I don’t need to name them. Think of the large ones you know and it is them.

There are over a million people still living under tarps and it’s nearly a year on — what do you think would be future solutions for the people of Haiti?
I’m just a volunteer so I don’t have all the answers, but the main thing Haiti needs is sustainable businesses and jobs so the NGO’s don’t have to play God and give out food and water everyday. Right now the houses need to be cleared by engineers so people can move back in or government land must be allocated for rebuilding. People are still in miserable conditions, and a serious deadly outbreak can occur at any moment — as it has in the north with the cholera epidemic. Cholera is also in a small part of PAP (Port au Prince), but if it hits these camps with 60,000 plus people living in them under tarps in close quarters, we will have a major catastrophe never seen before on our hands.

Why do you think that less than 10% of the overall promised international aid arrived in Haiti?
It is the same thing that happens in all the large natural disasters. The aid fairy takes it away to “never-never get there land!” Much of the raised aid money doesn’t get there and there are a million reasons why it never reaches there; pledges are withdrawn, there is a lot of corruption and mistrust in third worlds…even to the simple fact that people who raised money then don’t know where to send it. A lot of money sits in bank accounts for years accruing interest upon interest until the NGO’S decide how they want to use it — and they themselves also want to use it wisely, to be accountable to their donors.

Some NGO’s have such a large overhead that most of the donations get spent on their own buildings, faxes, cars, air travel and $500-a-night hotels — as I saw during the Tsunami. It’s shameful. Another reason is that pledging governments don’t want to send in a lot of money just before elections as it will be used for election campaigns — and not used for the people in need. There are still another million reasons why it hasn’t reached Haiti. I know the Australian Government sent in their pledged money to Haiti. But the USA have not sent in their money yet. They are holding on to it tightly.

It’s been said that Sean Penn’s JPHRO camp alone was better equipped than many of the major International Aid agencies camps — why do you think this was?
Yes, it was a successful and well-equipped camp because of plain old common sense and hard work. Everyone got their head down and worked very hard with no sleep and very hard camping conditions. There was no red tape or bureaucracy. If they couldn’t do something, they wouldn’t take no for an answer, they would go in another direction to get it done. It was the largest and most developed camp in Haiti and still is. NGO’s don’t work well together, but Sean had them all working well together…and if you didn’t want to join in, then you had to go work somewhere else. There’s so much politically correct dancing around in aid politics, but Sean isn’t afraid to speak his mind about the truth of the situation. Some people may not like him or his politics — but in Haiti he has a pure heart and no agenda but to help the people. And I watched him live in a tent for 6 months (and still is) eating rice and beans and getting a few hours sleep each night. He is making a really huge difference while many others are still “co-ordinating the co-ordination of the co-ordination meetings”.

What are the different ways in which the international community can help in Haiti?
By encouraging business and sustainable businesses and by helping rebuild the education system with new schools and learning facilities. A huge international effort needs to be exerted into reforestation to promote regrowth of the trees and forests which will have a large impact on the quality of human life by soaking up pollution, rebuilding natural habitats and ecosystems. Port-au-Prince is Haiti’s largest city and it’s overpopulated and congested, a big part of its many problems.

What advice would you give to future volunteers (doctors, nurses, aid workers etc.) thinking about heading over to Haiti to help?
It will need volunteers and medical volunteers for the next 20 years, so never think you are too late to go and help. Go for two weeks — and for most volunteers it will be the greatest and most real adventure in their life. Healing even a small infection helps save a leg from being amputated later on. People die of the smallest things in Haiti and your trip will save many lives. The cholera epidemic alone will be with us here in Haiti for quite a while; it will spike during the rainy seasons and we never have enough medical equipment. The best groups I have worked with are IMAT (http://www.imateam.org) and CMAT (http://www.canadianmedicalteams.org). You can go to their websites to apply.

What are some of the basic human rights violations that have happened and are still happening in Haiti?
In Haiti, Weadvance.org focuses on women’s rights. The horrific crimes against the beautiful Haitian women are violated on a daily basis. I see women who have been raped by 14 men the night before on their way to have a shower and who have also had their tongue cut out so they can’t talk about it. There is no justice here. Daily in our clinics I see 2, 3 and 4-year-old girls with syphilis and gonorrhoea — and it makes me cry into my cereal.

What are some of the patterns you’ve noticed after the earthquake in Haiti which you have also seen with other disasters, such as after the 2004 Tsunami in Sri Lanka?
The accountability of money, blocked aid at airports and ports, and heavy taxes on aid after the initial first months. Government not releasing aid from ports, price-gouging, aid groups not sharing resources or working together, the corruption of government and business owners, corrupt religious groups, withheld money sitting in bank accounts around the world, NGO’s and personal agendas. The Aid business is a rough business to be in — and it is a business!

In your opinion have the goals of the recovery and rebuilding of post-tsunami Sri Lanka, for example, been largely achieved, now almost six years on?
No, there is still much need for rebuilding and many people were lost in the cracks. I still run CTEC daily in Sri Lanka. It is the only tsunami warning center in Sri Lanka keeping people safe by monitoring earthquakes 24 hours a day, but I may have to close it soon due to lack of funding.

A disaster gets help and stays “sexy” as long as it stays in the news – but usually after 6 months the media and the world has moved onto the next disaster. That is the way it is and there is much aid required still for the ones that were left behind: the 2004 Tsunami, the Pakistan earthquakes and floods, Peru, Katrina…the list goes on.

At the time of this interview I also contacted Sean Penn, who told me that he was in the process of looking for more land for his IDP camp in Port-au-Prince. (Click on the expand button on the upper right hand corner of the images once they open up to view large versions.)

• Interview with Alison Skilbeck: Are There More Of You?
• Sri Lanka on tsunami alert after Indonesia quake (Updated)
• The Lessons We Never Learn
• Remembering the tsunami – along the south coast…
• A Wave of Relief

The event was creatively titled Ayelasah, after a rhythmic element in the rowing chants of South Asian fishing peoples, which sets the pace for work whose communal nature necessitates cooperation and harmony of movement.

As everyone took their seats, and the event began, art, music, and spoken word consumed the venue. Stories of growing up in Batticaloa were shared by the elders. The young sang of their hardships and desires growing up in a foreign land. All proceeds were to go to the land of their forefathers.

The spirit was clear. Their feet were here in Toronto; but, their hearts and their voices spoke for a people far off in an Island of their past.

This is a portion of the Tamil Diaspora so easily overlooked in Toronto. The media jumps when red flags and unrest occur on large streets in Downtown Toronto. Yet, when many bodies meet for a peaceful fundraising avail, in a silent venue in Toronto, there is hardly any media presence.

As I watch the artistic line up, it dawns upon me; of course, most are hurt and, at times, even angered. But, it is a love for the Island, and nothing less, which drives these souls.

Snap after snap, smile after smile, dollar after dollar; it is also clear that many have not forgotten where they are from. The fact that over four thousand Canadian dollars were raised that night to be sent back to help with the flood relief effort in Batticaloa makes that very clear.

• The Media and the Future of Sri Lanka: Young Canadians’ Peace Dialogue on Sri Lanka
• Messages by people in Manampitiya and Dimbulagala on flood relief
• Google map on flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka – February 2011
• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• On Flooding and Disaster Management

DON’T PANIC (always written in upper-case) was timeless advice that writer Douglas Adams deeply etched into the minds of all who read his famous novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Arthur C Clarke once called it ‘the best possible advice for the human race’.

But panic we do, regularly, as individuals, communities and sometimes as a whole country. The latest was on 15 April 2011, when confusion and panic were reported from many coastal areas of Sri Lanka following rumours of an oncoming tsunami. It was attributed to a television channel that had broadcast the views of a Lankan geologist who is speculating on predicting earthquakes with a little help from the heavens. Well, at least certain planets in the Solar System.

Scientific speculation is one thing, but causing public alarm and panic – especially at holiday time – is quite another. The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) was quoted as saying its units in the southern coastal areas had to take special measures to assure the people that there was no threat. The media reported how some people in Matara, Galle, Kalutara, Negombo, Trincomalee and Batticaloa fled their homes fearing another tsunami. Many of these areas were battered by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

The panic prompted the Disaster Management Minister to say that ‘legal action will be taken against astrologers, academics or others who make predictions on natural disasters and thereby cause panic among the people’.

However, the ‘panic broadcast’ was not an isolated incident. The matter had been building up from early or mid March 2011, when reports started appearing in mainstream newspapers as well as news websites of a Peradeniya university geologist team claiming to have found a new method to predict earthquakes. These reports appeared in privately owned media (example: The Nation, 27 March 2011) as well as in state owned media (examples: Lankapuvath, 9 April 2011; Daily News, 9 April 2011). Soon, the regional news media also picked up the story (example: Times of India/PTI, 9 April 2011).

Sinhala newspapers went further. Some openly cheered this ‘triumph’ of a local scientist in a quest where hundreds of scientists worldwide have not yet succeeded. There were also suggestions of ‘astrology being proved right’ and ‘Eastern knowledge knowing far more than western science’. Many of these ideas were opinions of individual journalists who didn’t bother to separate their reportage from commentary.

I was concerned. The spirit of enquiry is essential for new knowledge to be created, but science is a peer-reviewed and self-critical process. All ideas must be discussed and debated, ideally by fellow specialists competent and experienced in the same discipline. I wasn’t sure if that was happening. Our mainstream media were not helping either.

Prof. Kapila Dahanayake

So I decided to get to find out more. I first spoke to an old contact, Professor Kapila Dahanayake, Senior Professor of Geology at the University of Peradeniya. Among many other things, he is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Disaster Management. This is a summary of what he said (and has been saying for a long time):

An earthquake can happen anywhere, anytime – on land, or under the sea. According to current knowledge, it is not possible to predict an earthquake in advance.

For an earthquake to trigger a tsunami, several conditions have to be satisfied:

• It happens under the sea.
• Focus of the earthquake should be within 100 kilometres below the seabed.
• Magnitude of the quake should be 6.5 or higher.
• Disposition of the quake should be vertical or near vertical.

A tsunami can occur when all these conditions come together. Only after an earthquake happens and the tsunami generation is monitored can a specific warning be given with any specificity. Not before.

Scientists have been trying to anticipate earthquakes or discern probabilities for a long time. But current scientific knowledge is not adequate to make any kind of advance prediction about an earthquake, still less of a tsunami.

Prof. Atula Senaratne

I then spoke to the man at the centre of the current controversy: Professor Atula Senaratne, Associate Professor in Geology at University of Peradeniya. This was my first contact with him. Typed below is a near-verbatim version of my phone conversation which took place on the morning of 18 April 2011. I approached this with an open mind. I hope experts will join this debate to take this forward.

Nalaka Gunawardene: What is the basis of recent claims attributed to you in the media that you have found a new method to anticipate or predict earthquakes?

Atula Senaratne: Many people have been asking me if there is a basis for a Mayan warning suggesting the world could end in 2012 with a geological catastrophe. There is no current capability in geoscience to predict this, but this made us curious. So my team and I looked up the historical data on all the major earthquakes, and in particular those that have occurred during the past 100 years.

Q: What was your source for this data?

A: US Geological Survey, USGS. It is publicly available data with worldwide coverage. We studied the characteristics of these earthquakes – when and where they occurred. We were aware of various ancient beliefs in different cultures, both eastern and western, that relate the occurrence of earthquakes to solar eclipses, new Moon and full Moon, etc. We also noted that the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which triggered the massive tsunami, occurred on a full Moon day. But this co-relation was only sometimes, not always.

Q: Do these beliefs have any basis in current geological science?

A: Well, there is no clear statement from anyone so far on how earthquakes happen. They are said to happen along the geological (tectonic) plate boundaries, and rarely within the plates. We looked at 100 years of actual data. The plates within the Earth are moving all the time, but earthquakes don’t happen all the time when such movements are on a normal scale. It must need a sudden change in plate movement. Could there be an extraneous influence? Could it come from outside our planet – for example, gravitational pull from the Sun, Moon or the other planets in the Solar System? We wondered.

Q: How did you investigate your hypothesis?

A: We couldn’t find a direct co-relation with the Sun and Moon, although we know that these two bodies are principally responsible for tides on our planet. We then asked: what about the planets? We took the dates of the 136 significant earthquakes and, using a commercial astronomical software, we plotted the historical position/location of the planets for the date and time when those earthquakes are recorded to have occurred.

Q: What was the software you used?

A: Well, it’s a commercially available software. I can’t remember its exact name. When we did this plotting, we found a special kind of planetary configuration involving Jupiter, Uranus, Mars and Saturn.

Q: What exactly was the configuration?

A: They were aligned within a small angle. And the Sun and Moon were also on the same side, or in the same direction, or on the opposite side. In short, the planets were not scattered all over the sky. We looked carefully, went back and forth many times, and we found that this kind of planetary arrangement was there about 75 per cent of the time when the 136 key earthquakes have occurred during the past 100 years. This was not always, but statistically significant enough. So we asked: maybe we can use this factor as a way to assess future probability of significant earthquakes occurring?

Q: What did you do next with this speculation?

A: We wanted to test this. So we made several predictions among the geologist groups we are in contact with both nationally and internationally. We noted that there could be such a planetary alignment again on 20, 21 and 22 February 2011. And the Christchurch earthquake happened on 22 February. We prepared a research paper, which was presented at the Geological Society of Sri Lanka (GGSL) annual sessions on February 25 and 26.

Q: Where was it held?

A: It was held at the Institute of Fundamental Studies in Kandy. We said this was pure statistical analysis and as curious scientists we had noticed a co-relation which we wanted to probe further.

Q: Was there much discussion?

A: Well, we were encouraged to investigate more, which is how science works.

Q: Did you present and publish a paper?

A: The abstract is available online. We presented it as PowerPoint. We will write it up as a paper soon. (Writer’s note: The abstracts for the February 2011 symposium are not to be found on GGSL as at 18 April 2011. Previous session abstracts are given.)

Q: What happened next?

A: We made three or four further forecasts for March 2011. One was that there could be a significant earthquake over the north Pacific ocean between 3 and 10 March. The Sendai (Tohoku) earthquake occurred on March 11, devastating northern Japan and triggering a major tsunami. We realised our predictions are coming true one by one. We then made a forecast for April 2011, trying to test our hypothesis further. We said there could be significant quakes close to Turkey and on the China-India border. These did happen, as you can find on the USGS website. It was by this time that we also thought about releasing these initial speculations to the media, as this is a topic of considerable public interest.

Q: The media picked up some elements of your investigation, and then ran with it. Is that how it happened?

A: Well, some people – including some journalists – asked me: is there any possibility of a tsunami occurring in the Indian Ocean? I clearly said that tsunami is a secondary thing, that is sometimes triggered when an earthquake happens under the ocean under certain conditions. I stressed in all my media interviews that tsunamis are not predictable.

Q: What really happened with the so-called ‘panic broadcast’ that was carried on Swarnavahini TV channel on April 15?

A: I carefully explained that we are looking for a way to predict earthquakes, and that it is just not possible to predict any tsunamis. During this broadcast, the TV station showed some images from the 2004 tsunami. Maybe that created a false impression in the minds of some viewers. The announcer clearly said this is only an attempt to some interesting new information, and not meant to panic anyone. But it is human nature for people to assume the worst. This may have been the reason for the panic that resulted…

Q: Are you taken aback by the allegations of scaremongering implicating yourself and the TV station?

A: I did all this in good faith, and had no intention of scaring anyone or creating any panic. This is an emerging science, and we are working hard to push its frontiers.

Q: Science advances by peer review and critique. Have you published your hypothesis or speculations in a peer reviewed scientific journal?

A: Not yet, but we are working on a research paper for precisely such an international, peer reviewed scientific journal. I have more than 40 such papers already published in my name so far.

Q: When you publish, how do you plan to explain the statistical co-relationship you’ve noticed?

A: We want to theorise about this (connection). It could be either gravitational or magnetic. We know that deep inside our planet, below the crust and mantle, there is a liquid zone sometimes called the ‘metallic ocean’. We suspect that perhaps this metallic zone is somehow affected by the influence of certain celestial bodies.

Q: But we know that gravity weakens with distance. The planets you mention are so many millions of kilometres away. So, assuming your theory holds, can such far away bodies exert a noticeable influence?

A: Well, maybe it’s not gravity. Yes, gravitational pull is based on distance. Maybe it has something to do with magnetic fields. There is so much we still don’t know! That is why we want to study more. I call this astrogeophysics, a new and emerging science. (Writer’s note: There is already a branch of science by this name, defined in the Encarta dictionary as ‘the study of the surface and internal physical processes of planets and moons excluding the Earth’).

Q: Considering your line of enquiry is now extending beyond our planet, don’t you need an astronomer involved?

A: At the moment we don’t have any. I want to make it very clear that our work has nothing to do with astrology! We are using the scientific method.

Q: The Daily Mirror newspaper ran a news story on 16 April 2011 (curiously, not included in its website archive) that quoted you as saying “it is not possible to explain the method to laymen”. That’s a bit presumptuous – did you really say so?

A: No, I did not say such a thing. I have just explained to you the gist of what we are thinking and investigating.

Q: So what happens next?

A: There is a curious statistical co-relation we have found by just looking at data that has been available to many others. We may take years to understand this. But we feel it is definitely worth asking these questions and probing further, both to advance knowledge and also considering the massive potential to save lives by improving our ability to predict earthquakes.

###

Trained as a science writer, one-time journalist Nalaka Gunawardene still asks lots of questions. He blogs at http://movingimages.wordpress.com/ and writes a weekly column on science, environment and media in the Ravaya newspaper.

• Sri Lanka on tsunami alert after Indonesia quake (Updated)
• A is for Adhi Vesak
• ICTs, science fiction and disasters: A conversation with Nalaka Gunawardene
• Nurturing Public Trust in Times of Crisis: Reflections on April 11 Tsunami Warning
• From Haiti Hell: Perspectives from the ground a year after the earthquake

Groundviews was sent these images of messages the people of Manampitiya and Dimbulagala had written to their political representatives. The black flags, from an earlier date, were erected in opposition to the irregularity and non-reciept of promised flood relief.

The first poster reads “To all candidates and their supporters, you are banned from entering my plot of land”. The second reads, “From Manampitiya, Sarvodaya, make our village road! Until we have what we own, stay away from our village!”

• Sri Lanka’s Flood Response: In Dimbulagala, people protest and plead
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance
• Like Slaves In Jaffna
• Colombo goes under water, and not for the first time
• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka

Kushil Gunasekera is Muttiah Muralitharan’s manager for over 10 years. Though this came up in the discussion along with Sri Lanka’s prospects at the Cricket World Cup this year, the chief focus of discussion was based on Kushil’s other life as the founder of the Foundation of Goodness and his social work in Seenigama.

Kushil is a successful businessman, and before that a first class cricketer, who eventually gave up his business to become a full time social entrepreneur and help the village of his birth and childhood. The Foundation’s website and his answers constantly refer to good, and doing good. I asked Kushil what for him was goodness. The Foundation’s scope of work in so incredibly broad, as is evident from their website, I asked Kushil whether he had taken on the role that is traditionally associated with government service delivery. I asked him about how he deals with the culture of dependency, and that for the best of reasons he may be creating in Seenigama an environment that is unsustainable after Kushil and the Foundation moves on. Kushil’s answer, anchored to skills development and empowerment is an interesting one.

Kushil’s close connections to Sri Lankan cricket, and the national cricket team clearly benefits his work and the Foundation. After the tsunami, Kushil recounts on this programme how the added visibility of Botham, Warne combined with local cricketers helped the village recover by focussing attention on the Foundation’s work.

Invariably, the conversation also focussed on his experience as Murali’s manager for over 10 years, Murali’s personality and what he had done for the Foundation. We also spoke about Sri Lanka’s prospects at the 2011 Cricket World Cup.

• World Cup cricket aiding reconciliation in Sri Lanka: Fact or fiction?
• Does cricket have a citizenship?
• THE POLITICAL LESSONS OF THE SMILING ASSASSIN: MURALI, CRICKET AND SRI LANKAN IDENTITY
• Let’s just be Sri Lankan men!
• On Anthems and the State of the Union

Many families had their wattle and dob houses completely destroyed by the rains.

In the mean time it is reported that they had also been asked by officials to vacate from the schools where they had taken shelter due to displacement. This affected several families who had to leave the schools and had nowhere to go in Dimbulagala, Dalukana, Soruwila and Mutugala (Welikanda DS division). They are stranded. While some principals were generous enough to allow the families to stay in schools some others (like Kashappa Vidyalaya, Soruwila Tamil School etc) reportedly were not willing to keep the displaced people.

Those that could find a friend or relative nearby went to stay with them, the others took shelter in nearby pansala or put up temporary structures like the one below (Dimbulagala). The women sleep at night in houses nearby while the men take shelter under these tents. Their main livelihood is fishing which is at a near standstill at the moment.

In the mean time many of the promised assistance from the Government, did not arrive. They had reportedly not got anything from the Government in the past few days.

After repeated complaints and appeals that were unsuccessful the people became very frustrated due to not receiving assistance due to them and a lack of solution for their shelter problem. On Friday morning it boiled over on to the streets and several hundred people were seen protesting in front of the Dimbulagala DS office.

After a five hour stand off, the crowd dispersed when the Divisional Secretary gave an undertaking that due assistance will be delivered on Saturday.

The people also wrote a letter and faxed to the President and the Minister for Disaster Response. They are pleading and hoping that their problems will be addressed by the authorities concerned. Failing which, it is reported that they are willing to take to the streets again.

###

Compiled by P.B. Gowthaman based on information and photos given by friends who visited the area on Friday.

• Messages by people in Manampitiya and Dimbulagala on flood relief
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance
• Forcible resettlements in East
• Two testimonies from families released from Menik Camp
• War IDPs

The rains over the last couple of days have had a devastating effect on many parts of Badulla and surroundings.  It is not floods but landslides that are causing most of the damage.

The usual stream that runs through the city is brimming with water and has breached its banks in a number of locations. But the widening work that had been done after the previous floods proved to be effective in channeling the deluge without too much damage as feared. So far!

But the rain water drainage systems in the city as well as in the surrounding towns and villages are in very poor condition. As a result in most places the roads are flooded. Below are pictures from Hali-Ela where road is still under construction for long stretches.

Hundreds of land slips due to rain in the last two days are to be seen throughout the hill country and around Badulla. Many are small, some large and a few huge.

Three of the largest land slips are currently affecting hundreds of families. As we speak the land is slipping beneath their feet. Many families have been evacuated, with the most vulnerable also removing all their belongings and what ever else they can remove from their houses. The below are pictures from Badulusirigama, Badulla – one of the most affected areas. A large mass of land is slipping gradually down the hill, carrying down along with it several houses and roads.

En-route to Imbulgama, Badulla

A massive slip in Eladaluwa, Badulla

• On Flooding and Disaster Management
• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• Journalist Pakkiyanathan Vijayashanthan who went missing reported to Badulla Police station
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance
• No one to listen to our pleas

The map above identifies the main flood-affected regions, sites where relief and rescue operations have been conducted and specific DS divisions where IDP camps have been setup. 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 continuously updated as soon as the Editors of Groundviews receive detailed information and reports from the ground.

Between the 11th and the 18th of January, heavy rainfall led to severe floods and widespread destruction in several provinces across the island that affected over 1 million people. 43 people were killed and over 300,000 were displaced. The districts of Ampara, Trincomalee, Polonnaruwa, Batticaloa and Anuradhapura were severely affected in January and at present with heavy rainfall once again causing severe flooding, these districts have been the worst affected. The problem has been compounded by the fact that several tanks in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa have been inundated and as a result the spill gates have been opened. This has exacerbated the flooding of surrounding villages. Several minor irrigation tanks have been breached as well according to the Daily Mirror,

During the previous floods in early January, 408 minor tanks, 308 anicuts and 760 irrigation canals were damaged.

Agrarian Services Director General Ravindra Hevavitarana told Daily Mirror that three more tanks had been breached this time in the Batticaloa District and another three in the Trincomalee District. Besides, Mr. Hevavitarana said that the water level had risen in at least 50 other minor tanks placing them at the risk of being breached.

“If the rainy weather continues, they will be damaged. The situation is serious,” he said.

Numerous IDP camps have been setup to provide temporary shelter and relief to over 80,000 IDPs.

The Daily Mirror notes the following in a news report:

The flood situation in the country reached dangerous levels with the number of affected families increasing by over 100,000 within hours, bringing the total of affected families to 230,000, causing six deaths, official (sic.) said.

The number affected stood at 100,000 late Thursday evening. Bad weather took its toll in 17 districts while it was reported that those affected were kept in 322 camps.

Spill gates were opened in all tanks in the Anurdhapura, Polonnaruwa, Batticaloa, Ampara, Vavuniya and Trincomalee Districts as almost all the tanks reached spill levels.

Director General Department of Irrigation G. G. Godaliyadha said that the Anurahapura and Polonnaruwa Districts posed the most danger as gushing waters of Nachchiduwa, Padaviya and Rajangana  and several other tanks inundated all low lands in Anuradhapura while many areas in Polonnaruwa was also submerged. Medirigriya area was also submerged as the gates of Kavudulla tanks were opened.

The Navy and Air Force have been deployed to deliver flood relief and conducted rescue operations. According to news reports on 4/2/2011, 20 people have been rescued so far by the Air Force. News reports that quote the DMC also indicate that six people have been killed.

Another Daily Mirror news report notes the extent of destruction to paddy lands in various districts:

Meanwhile, 125,000 acres of paddy land had been inundated in the Ampara District, 50,000 acres in Anuradhapura, 28,000 acres in Batticaloa, 16,000 in Polonnaruwa, 10,000 acres in Vavuniya, 7200 acres in Mullaitivu and 50,000 acres in Trincomalee.

Mr. Hevavitarana said paddy of some of these lands which were flooded last time, were salvaged after the water level subsided.

“They have again been flooded.  In the districts like Batticaloa and Ampara, some paddy lands which were not affected last time have been submerged this time,” he said.

Last time, altogether 200,000 paddy acres were totally destroyed.

The DMC have released their situation report for Friday (04/02/2011).

Please view the map and watch this space for further updates.

• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• On Flooding and Disaster Management
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance
• The ‘Grease Devil’ Phenomena in Sri Lanka: A Brief Collation of Reports
• BATTICALOA CONSORTIUM OF HUMANITARIAN AGENCIES FACILITATING TO THE BATTICOLA IDPS

Photos courtesy Batticaloa Facebook Page

I haven’t been reading the news much lately. I heard about the floods in the East and North Central Province and thought abstractly to myself, ‘how awful’. I watched the downpour in Colombo itself and complained about the shivering cold of that one day during which temperatures fell to 18 degrees – the lowest in over 60 years.

I never really fathomed the extent of the destruction until I happened across a 3-line post on a blog, linking to some footage by the airforce of the flooding in Batticaloa. I didn’t pay much attention to the article on the airforce site, but those pictures stunned me. Water up to treetops. Acre upon acre of paddy land totally destroyed. All I could think was, ‘haven’t they been through enough?’

War. Tsunami. Floods. Would it ever stop? Would they ever have the luxury of having normal lives again? Would there ever come a time when they would stop having to start over? I felt an immense tiredness for them as well as an odd admiration for their unending resilience and ability to survive disaster upon disaster. This post was a result of those feelings – a grossly inadequate but well-meant tribute to their struggle.

###

When the skies rumbled, angry and blistered with grey clouds, we were happy. Rain has mostly been our friend – a welcome drink for thirsty fields; a muddy playground for restless babies.

I myself have always loved the rain. As a child I would run out whenever my mother’s back was turned and spin like a runaway firework in the moving, liquid soil. Brown would squelch up between my toes and ooze onto my feet and the cooling sensation would make me swoon. My country is often hot and in those days, rain meant relief.  I would open my mouth to it, my mother’s distant scoldings unheeded, and drink with an eagerness than frightened me. As if I was trying to drink in the secrets of all of nature. And the water would not only quench my thirst; it somehow made me stronger. My feet always stomped harder after that first drink; mud would explode outwards, all around me, and I would feel invincible.

Even as I grew up and learned that explosions were not always joyous, I never stopped loving that rain. In the most bitter times, it would still taste sweet, and remind me of younger, happier days, when nothing ugly seemed to exist. When my world was solely and selfishly my own. I had no real worries then. If I cried I would be fed; if I couldn’t sleep my mother would stroke my back until the feel of her fingertips on my skin numbed me into unconsciousness. And if I was thirsty, I always had the rain.

My father was a farmer and so we lived by the rain. When it didn’t come, we, along with our crops, were devastated. Money was short, food scarce, tempers dark with hunger. Rain for us meant green, growth, abundance, food in our stomachs. As I grew older, when I ran out into the rain, it was to give thanks.

“You love the rain more than me” my lover accused once when my eyes were drawn one too many times to the streaming water outside and away from his dry, smooth skin. “No” I had replied, forcing my gaze away; but I was lying.

If someone had told me then that rain would one day be one of the many strikes against my family, village and people, I would have defended my friend. Even then I knew of horror. The horror of being trapped in a battle I was not fighting; where each side was as deadly as the other; where there was no such thing as winning. I knew about bullets and shrapnel; the cries of wounded men and grieving children. Later, I would learn the horror of the sea – its deadly reach and house-ripping force. I would learn about loss when searching for my lover in the wake of the surge – a search that would come to nothing.

Long ago, I had stopped feeling betrayed. I used to feel as if the Gods were punishing us until I stopped believing in them. Invisible and conveniently absent deities – deaf to the wailing of the mourners and the tears of orphans – passing out judgments of life and death didn’t seem very God-like to me.

Besides, where is the point in berating these blind Gods? When living with such horror, there is no need for Gods – only survival. And survival takes up all your strength. To piece together shattered nerves, stem the bleeding of wounded hearts; to simply be normal again takes up all your strength until there is none left, even to pray.

But the rain…! From the day it began until the day it ended, it felt like a stranger. I looked outside at the heavy, angry water beating itself into the earth, and for the first time, felt fearful. Our young paddy drowned in hours. Mud stopped being a plaything and became an insidious trap for careless, panicked feet. And when I ran outside, the water felt like hail on my skin. I did not feel refreshed as I usually do, but soaked through and too waterlogged to move. It was as if even my hair was weighing me down. What rain was this, that was more an impediment than a joy? It was no rain I ever knew.

When my father rushed into the house, the water making rivulets in every crease and hollow of his thin body, we knew immediately that we had to run. No words were exchanged; we all grabbed what we could reach and bolted from a home we knew we would never see again. It took several minutes of running to realize the only object I had taken was half a loaf of bread, now soggy and melting into the fast rising water at our feet. I threw it away and it was lost in an instant.

I don’t know how long we ran, or how far. I could only hear the tired encouragements of my father, urging us desperately onward, and the hoarse panting of my mother as I pushed her in front of me, terrified she would fall if I didn’t. My face was pouring with sweat despite the onslaught from above and for the first time I felt the rain pull the energy out of me instead of pouring it in. My panicked sobs ripped out of me in short, panted gasps; the ugliest sound I’d ever heard; worse somehow than distant shelling.

And the rain went on, long after we reached shelter and even as we received news of more and more devastation in the place we once called our home. I watched my parents suddenly age a hundred years; too old now to start over as they had done before. Turned ancient in a matter of days, they looked at me with expressions I had used on them before; but never them on me – dependence. The rain had rendered them old and me, suddenly, their parent.

*

Eventually, the sky ran out of tears; and the soil began to soak up the flooding. In a while, I would be able to leave this shelter and go back… to what? I have no home; I must rebuild it. My parents have done so before for my sake and I will do it today for theirs. I know now that their resilience was a lesson I learned without realizing it; that even throughout my carefree days of running in the rain, I somehow absorbed this miraculous skill. Did it seep into the pores of my bare feet as they splashed through the mud? Or did the rain feed my open, laughing mouth with reserves of strength that I would need to counter its future betrayal?

I walked outside a while, reveling unfamiliarly in the dryness of my surroundings. The grass at my feet waved innocently in the breeze, looking refreshed and reborn and I wondered at the resilience of nature itself. Entire villages like mine were destroyed; houses like mine were swept away in a drowning tide; but this grass with its shallow network of roots survived – growing only fatter and greener as a result of the downpour.  Its triumphant dance in the wind that day mocked me, but at the same, gave me strength.

I would put down my roots again, but they would be shallow. My naïve trust in the rain had vanished forever: I had lost a friend, but in doing so, had been taught to be ready for the next time. Ready to run. Ready for my world to end but also to begin, yet again.

• The Fear of Peace
• Focus on Badulla: Landslides
• Barbed Wire
• What must it be like to live behind these Kovil gates?
• “Oya Sinhalade? Demalade?” – Questioning a question in post-war Sri Lanka

The following is a brief response to queries we have received about what considerations should be made during the recovery phase of the flood disaster with regards the possible mental health and psychosocial impacts on affected people.  As individuals and families return to their communities and homes from temporary camps, the relief effort is due to transition towards meeting the needs of restoring shelters, resuscitating livelihoods and repairing infrastructure.  In terms of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) needs, we note the important differences between the recent flood disaster and either the 2004 Tsunami or prolonged armed conflict in Sri Lanka.  The experience of the recent floods has not produced the same severity nor complexity of impacts on either psychological (ie. primary trauma) or social dimensions of the affected people’s lives.  Therefore, we suggest an approach to assisting recovery that is primarily built on a) integration MHPSS considerations into mainstream relief and recovery programmes, and b) linking with existing MHPSS services in the district wherever targeted or more specialised services are required.

Some Guiding Principles for Integration of MHPSS Considerations into Flood Recovery

The way that support is provided to meet the material and practical needs of individuals, families and communities affected by the floods can have positive or negative implications for their levels of distress and difficulty – both at individual and group levels.  Recent eruptions of anger and commotion around relief distribution illustrate dramatically some of these impacts.   Sensitive approaches can go a long way to addressing material needs that are causing worry to affected people, as well as avoid creating new problems.

1. Ensure clarity of information about relief, possible compensation, available services and recovery processes.  Ensure predictability, reliability and transparency in relation to these.
2. Do No Harm – prevent relief and other forms of assistance from causing conflict, competition or disruption within affected communities; avoid creating unrealistic expectations; prevent creating long term dependencies.
3. Involve affected communities in prioritisation, planning and implementation of recovery programmes.  Ensure that relief provision is based on up-to-date needs assessment, and responds to community or family priorities.  Actively coordinate with others providing assistance to the same community.  Reinforce the sense of control and competence of people in the community and within families, rather than helplessness.
4. Support the resumption of normal community structures and activities (ie. schools, religious practices, village committees, etc), and minimal disruption of these by external programmes.

Whilst most people will not require specialised or targeted MHPSS interventions, there may be a few whose pre-existing vulnerabilities may have been worsened by what has happened to them during and after the flood.  Being sensitive to the existence of people who may be in need of special assistance, and connecting them to existing services is a valuable action that can be taken by non-MHPSS service providers and volunteers.

1. Pay attention to pre-flood vulnerabilities (serious mental illness, disability, extreme poverty, complex family or social problems) that may prevent some individuals and families from making an independent recovery from losses due to the floods.  Identify support needs and create sustainable responses to these problems, many of which may persist in the medium to long term.
2. Identify local resources for mental health and psychosocial support (possibly at a Divisional Secretariat / MOH or lower level) to whom difficult cases or issues may be referred, or from whom assistance may be sought for responding to vulnerable individuals or groups. In remote areas where these services do not yet exist, the opportunity should be used to extend available services to meet MHPSS needs for the medium and long-term.
3. Specialised or targeted MHPSS interventions should be based on systematic needs assessments, and should seek to integrate with the existing systems for care.

Useful Contacts / Sources:

• Mental Health Unit, Batticaloa Teaching Hospital (Hotline: 065-2225656)
• Mental Health Unit, Valaichenai Base Hospital (Hotline: 065-3657613)
• Office of Regional Director for Health Services, Batticaloa (065-2224465)
• IASC Guidelines on MHPSS in Emergencies (see especially practical guidance on cross sectoral considerations to support wellbeing)
• www.psychosocialnetwork.net (an online global network with resources and practitioners in the field of MHPSS)

Dr. Gambanathan is the District Psychiatrist, Batticaloa. Ananda Galappatti is a medical anthropologist and a practitioner in the field of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in situations of conflict, disaster and other adverse social conditions.

• Importance of psychosocial interventions in post conflict Sri Lanka
• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• Google map on flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka – February 2011
• Messages by people in Manampitiya and Dimbulagala on flood relief
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance

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

###

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
• New censorship of SMS news in Sri Lanka

Past performance

On many an occasion, the Colombo Municipal Council’s performance has been criticised as inefficient, ineffective, uneconomic, politicised, corrupt, lethargic and inadequate. The lack of a reponse and inaction to the large piles of solid waste, the dengue epidemic, environmental degradation and illegal constructions were the areas mostly criticised. Hence, this revelation may be welcome news to rate payers and citizens interacting with the CMC. Additionally, there was publicity that the proposed Corporation will function under the Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, which, no doubt, would have brought happier smiles.

In the recent past there had been periods where the CMC received accolades and the mayoral terms of Sirisena Cooray [pre Provincial Councils (PCs)] and Karu Jayasuriya (post-PC) are examples. However, these exemplary performances were pegged to the political clout that the former possessed and the professional managerial capacity that was promoted and engrained during the latter’s tenure, respectively. It is the same organisation, laws, technocrats, managers and work force that performed for such positive kudos. Hence, whether corporatization is the only answer to respond to inefficiency, ineffectiveness and uneconomical status may boggle our minds. We hear of undisclosed political intentions for this proposal, but this exercise is to direct attention to power sharing for reengineering.

Pending legislations for centralisation

Firstly, we hear of powerful legislators speaking about “enhancing the powers of the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution” that is expected to be ratified in January 2011, but with the reduction of certain powers already devolved! In addition, media reportage indicates that the new law to convert CMC into a Corporation may be passed before the end of 2010, while the law to change the process of elections in Local Authorities (LAs) is scheduled for early passage.

Secondly, there are international and domestic demands to strengthen the 13^th Amendment to create minority community confidence. However, some parties in the government are unsupportive of “power sharing”. Yet, by withdrawing devolved powers (e.g. schools, hospitals), the non-implementation of land powers, blocking the decetralisation of police powers etc, every government since 1987 has proved their allergy to genuine power sharing. Even the current reengineering exercise proves that the incumbent government is reluctant to devolve power and has a distinct penchant to centralize already devolved power.

Thirdly, we have not yet seen the Draft Bill. If we go by the media, with the establishment of a Corporation (or Authority) the democratically elected body to administer the CMC will be erased.

13^th Amendment and Corporatisation

The existing law for Local Government is constitutionally based on the 13^th Amendment.

I quote Section 4 of the List I- Local Government.

“4.1 Local authorities for the purpose of local government and village administration, such as Municipal Councils…..” will be under the PCs.  Under 4.2 PCs are empowered for “supervision of the administration of local authorities established by law…”. Therefore, by creating a Corporation under central control, the devolved powers of the Western PC (WPC) will be erased and several items under List I that matter to the CMC will be withdrawn. In addition, a constitutional amendment may be required to withdraw the reference to Municipal Councils (MCs) under Section 4 of List I, because Parliament cannot make laws overriding the Constitution.

Section 4.3 under List I offers the most relevant powers for the PCs.

“4.3  LAs will have the powers vested in them under existing law; MCs and Urban Councils will have the powers vested under the MCs Ordinance and Urban Councils Ordinance. …….. It will be open to a Provincial Council to confer additional powers on local authorities but not take away their powers.”

If the government wishes to strengthen the CMC, it should be done, constitutionally, by the Western Provincial Council (WPC). The withdrawal of power is not permitted by the Constitution; however, the proposed organisation will take away provincial council powers, instead of conferring additional powers, thus contradicting the 13^th Amendment. Therefore, this constitutional hurdle must be overcome if the Authority is to gain life.

Media reports, though not specific impresses that this law will be introduced soon. Hence, one may explore the forum to legislate to corporatise the CMC. No provincial council for the last 23 years has passed the LA Statutes, except to remove Chairmen and Mayors!  A new corporatisation Statute may not be introduced for the next two months and therefore, the government may get a resolution passed in the WPC authorising the Parliament to act according to Article 154G (4). The latter permits the Parliament to pass legislation on the request from a provincial council. Still the question will be whether the WPC could ask for a reduction of its powers- going against Section 4.3 of List I.

When the 18^th Amendment was passed, senior ministers argued that the scrapping of the two election terms [Article 31 (2) of the Constitution] reflected the enlargement of franchise; being more democratic; giving more opportunities to the voters to elect a President. If the amendment does represent an enlargement of the franchise,  then why is the government withdrawing the opportunity of the people to elect their Municipal Councillors? Furthermore, is it permissible to have one democratic principle for LAs and another for Presidency? Our politicians are great innovators and justification will be done!

The MCs exist in many districts and the electors in these MCs engage in a democratic franchise to elect Municipal Administrations.  The creation of a Corporation under the Ministry of Defence as publicised, will forcibly withdraw them from the election process -‘an afforded possible opportunity to the People to participate’ at a legally accepted level of ‘national life and in government’. It will thus conflict with the fundamental right provided by Article 27 (4) of the Constitution, which expects the State to “strengthen and broaden the democratic structure of government and the democratic rights of the People by decentralizing the administration”. Therefore, the latter will result in the centralisation of administration and the withdrawal of a democratic right.

Though the constitutional provisions on exercising franchise does not [Article 4 (e) of the Constitution] speak of LA Elections, by corporatising the CMC and scrapping an elected LA, the ultimate consequence of this proposal will be the disenfranchisement of the electors in Colombo. This will be discriminatory to the electors within the CMC, when compared with electors in other MCs.

Corporations and success

It appears that the promoters of this proposal believe that corporatisation is the panacea for the deficiencies of municipal management. The cumulative and continuous weak performance of many corporations like the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) and Ceylon Transport Board (CTB) are examples of centralized organisational failures.

What is the guarantee that a corporatised CMC would perform better than now? The performances during Cooray’s and Jayasuriya’s mayoral terms were proof of the potential to be successful under the MC Ordinance. Any visible success disappeared after their resignation and the political clout, personality and professional skills of these two could not be replaced afterwards. This could happen with the proposed changes too. Where should we head if and when it happens? The Buddhist theory of impermance is right.

Caution

Therefore, if corporatisation is to happen as anticipated I caution that the 13^th Amendment provisions affecting this proposal have to be erased. Whether it would suit other political issues is a matter to be reviewed by politicians.

Secondly, the “super managers” with all cross connections may not be available throughout and hence there cannot be solutions to the problems that may emerge later.

Thirdly, I believe that if the proposed reengineering takes place there will be funds for very sophisticated improvements, such as municipal highways, electric underground trains, mono-rails, infrastructure development, high rise residential areas etc. because of the political and official clout of operatives. Will that continue after the “super managers” withdraw? It is necessary to think about sustainability too.

Lessons learnt from other experiences

I quote an example from India to summarily highlight how the Calcutta Municipal Corporation functions to serve in improving various civic amenities, providing numerous services, slum development programmes, sewage and waste management in a city having a 4.6 million population. The lessons from Calcutta could be learnt to avoid major pitfalls in the creation of a Municipal Corporation for Colombo.

1.   The Calcutta Municipal Corporation became effective on an appointed date by the State Government, because LAs are a State Government subject. As such, why not place the proposed Corporation under the WPC? The issue of engaging the Defence Ministry has to be reexamined, as the WPC does not have authority over a Ninth Schedule List II subject, i.e. Defence.

2.   Calcutta Municipal Corporation consists of elected Councillors and non-voting ‘State Government’ nominees that combined the democratic right for franchise and professional contributions respectively. The Defence representatives could be appointed to the Municipal Corporation by adding such a provision in the Statute. If the citizens are dissatisfied with the performance of the Corporation they can outvote them. However, if it is a centralized Corporation the rate payers will be burdened like our being burdened with the CEB or CPC or CTB inefficiencies.

3    The 149 elected Councillors in Calcutta elect a Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Chairman and later constitute the Mayor-in–Council (MiC). It consists of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and less than ten other elected Councillors of the Corporation – an arrangement like a Cabinet. The appointees to MiC will be the choice of the Mayor and hence collective responsibility could be established.

4    The Municipal Accounts Committee, Borough Committees, Ward Committees and Municipal Consultative Committees are established and empowered by the Act to enhance participation and ownership. These institutional arrangements can be introduced even in Colombo.

5.   Municipal Corporation employees from the Municipal Commissioner downwards are appointed and vacancy filling, disciplinary control etc are stated in the Calcutta Act. This could go along with the provisions of our Provincial Councils Act.

6  The establishment of Municipal Service Commission and Municipal Vigilance Authority are provided in Calcutta, which are not in the MCs Ordinance but could be established by WPC’s Statute.

7   General, Obligatory and Discretionary powers and functions in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation are given in the Act. It includes all activities such as works and contracts, controls, Municipal Fund management, budgeting, loans, accounting and audit, taxation, civic services, sanitation related activities, and importantly the State Government’s actions etc. These are mostly the same functions under the MCs Ordinance in Sri Lanka.

These are some highlights.

Urban Development Authority (UDA) and CMC

Presently the UDA is under the Ministry of Defence, which may have been so placed to  influence the LAs advantageously. I believe that the UDA could be fruitfully engaged in guidance for efficient and effective municipal management through its available expertise in city planning, architecture, Geographic Information Systems, environmental development etc that is not adequately used.

Conclusion

Hence, a Corporation created under the WPC, with external expertise, having a stake in management, facilitated by the UDA ( in addition to the Ministry of Defence) could be a workable  and effective combination that could be considered, rather than to violate the existing power sharing provisions in the Constitution and to steamroll devolved governance.

We must not state that power sharing has failed, as the retort will be that even the centralized administration has failed. Does this mean that there is no solution for problems? It is a matter to develop Laws, Statutes, systems, expertise, professionalism, cooperation etc to optimally perform to achieve objectives. Sometimes centralisation may not be the sole answer for the deficienies of municipal activities.

• All Party Representative Committee (APRC) Final Report: Executive Summary
• A Brief Commentary and Table on the Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Bill 2010
• The 13th Amendment as a political solution
• A critique of the Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Bill
• Some thoughts on the Second Chamber

This film was not a labour of love. This film was hard. Damn hard, to put together and to persevere with. The reasons why it has come this far has a great deal to do with the burden placed upon us by what we did, where we went and what we captured. Many of the people we met along the way instilled in us a responsibility. After staring at us with disbelief upon hearing of our ‘great coup’, of how we as students somehow managed to gain access to areas no ‘real’ journalist could, how we visited the infamous IDP camps, walked among the ruins of Kilinochchi, and drove through the rubble of Mullaitivu and Chalai and all this barely a month after the last bullet was fired or the last soldier fell – upon hearing our story many within the country responded not with laurels or platitudes but with sober direction. Go. Do something with this. You must. You have the tapes. You have the images. Tell your story. No-one else will. And please…do it quickly.

This new post-war Sri Lanka ensured that we had no time to pat backs or pop corks or settle into an awaiting job in the industry here in London – there was an impatience and an eagerness to establish a new base of understanding and discourse. A sense of mission that in the next few days those such as Groundviews will no doubt help to form with the likes of this special edition. So when we came back from Sri Lanka and passed that strange phase of settling back into the usual routine of friends, family and facebook we decided to see this through and contribute to the debate. We wanted to take part in the discourse and perhaps spark a few ourselves.

This is our story. Wholly subjective, entirely contradictory. Each of us without exception changed, like all of you, since last May. Our story has moved us in ways we couldn’t grasp at the time, and that is what this film tries its best to encapsulate is that journey. Through our experience we hope to tell a wider one. One that captures a moment of a country at a crossroads. I always described coming to Sri Lanka that June when celebrations had faded into scattered placards and novelty flags as having arrived a day after a Tsunami had hit. Where people were staggering around trying to realign paradigms and shift focus. But for us as outsiders looking in we were shocked at how people who, after the war was won, had little concern about how they got there. Heidi especially for whom notions of human rights, civil liberties and accountability were fixed, fundamental and unquestioned. Not so we found among the people in Colombo and the rest – security trumped them all. The ability to send children to school without worry, that was what they would barter for freedom of expression. It was an unsettling trade-off for us to get our heads around but an end of bombs, destruction and killing was an end to perpetual fear. So who were we young foreign upstarts to question how they got there? Good point.

All through our journey from Colombo to Chalai we were looking for something it seemed that no-one had any interest in finding. We termed it ‘the blank page’ and we were determined to fill it whether anyone cared or not. The reporting on the war had shifted focus to journalism itself. The headlines read how British journalists were deported while the war itself went unreported on the ground. There also seemed to be an apparent lack of compassion when talking numbers good and bad. The human costs of the war were being disputed alongside arguments about how many dead bodies it takes to constitute a genocide.

When arriving in Sri Lanka we were guilty of it too. Having been afforded an opportunity of a lifetime we were all terrified of dropping the ball on this. Be detached they say, be professional. It is a story to be gotten, nothing more nothing less. This is the training they give you when you want to be a war correspondent back home. Go for the human angle – get some tears. Tears sell papers. Tears and barbed wire. This is what is deemed valuable footage back home. So we looked and searched, intruded and zoomed in closer when our consciences tugged otherwise. This is what is asked of you as a journalist. But it is when you are there among the debris breathing the acrid scent you realise the absurdity of such a notion as detachment. It is when you have a lens trained on a man who out of simple politeness and civility steps aside for you to go ahead and intrude upon his meagre possessions, his family and his little life – it is then that you get it. It is only then that you understand. This is war. Aside from the killing and the waste, there is a loss of dignity and humanity that as green, wet-behind-the-ears, under-qualified students would see where veteran professionals would not. It was the stark naked truth of discarded humanity. This above all the ruins and the rubble we walked through was what we are left with a year on. Those faces, those eyes trying their level best to maintain solemnity among such squalor. When we returned to London all three of us cited that moment as the moment where it all changed for us and it is through our collective story that we hope to provide it as a context. It is this moment that is produced for you in the clip below.

Phil: An indelible image
When getting back to London I found myself sifting through the photos I took in those three weeks. 4,000 individual pictures in all. I wanted to capture an image that might in some way help build a clearer picture of those final months of the war. We became the first independent visitors to those areas and for us it was important to try and salvage some truth albeit from the aftermath. But going through those pictures all I am left with is an overwhelming sense of loss. For me this film represents the realisation that what was really worth capturing was lost forever among those ruins. The images that really counted went undocumented and how ever many photos taken after the fact can never come close to uncovering the truth.

Heidi: International dialogue
During filming there was an overriding sense of jingoism Beyond the ever easy smiles there were always those who used the opportunity to vent their frustrations out on me as a ‘representative’ of the colonial international community. My Finnish descent would always be questioned – so just how close are Norway and Finland? I struggled with the accusations leveled at my home region, the idea that western countries and INGO’s as a whole had only malicious and selfish motives behind their involvement and had little concern with keeping the peace. It is that generalized notion that perhaps with this film I can help dispel. A year on, my experiences in Sri Lanka led to an MA in Human Rights. I for one, won’t stop believing that some of us from the outside looking in aren’t out to make Sri Lanka weaker and that some of us would like to contribute meaningfully and help heal the rift internationally.

Guy: The Diaspora question
Personally speaking I am eager for this documentary to help shift focus here at home in London and elsewhere among the Diaspora communities. On May 19^th 2009 the streets of London were ablaze with red and yellow. A humanitarian plea at Parliament Square had morphed into a mass of hurt, screaming people flying the flags of the vanquished LTTE. The disarticulation of the Tamil and Sinhalese diaspora communities is an often cited issue on these pages. For me, as a second generation Sinhalese, I found it puzzling when witnessing kids younger than me donning specially made Eelam hoodies and LTTE coloured bracelets on the streets of Wembley, Tooting and Central London. Even more disconcerting was the manner at which protests on the Sinhalese side were reduced to little more than a numbers game between the two parties. Every week it seemed I was asked to join the Sinhala protests. I kept asking what the cause was and the bewildered response almost always came back that it was because the Tamils did it a week before. Come back when you got a better reason, I had said. For refusing to take part others like myself were deemed un-Sri Lankan at a time when unabashed patriotism was the order of the day. Moderate voices back then were lost amidst the din. If nothing else, I hope this film will help steer a fresher kind of contestation, one where we in the ‘cold countries’ will, for the lack of a better term, grow up a bit. Learn lessons and seek a fuller participation however we choose to do so, through words, action, images or film.

Together.

By Guy Gunaratne, Heidi Lindvall and Phil Panchenko

[Editors note: The Facebook page for this up-coming movie can be accessed here.]

• Interview with Asoka Handagama
• A Wobbly Bridge (Or Is It A Footpath?) From The Tamil Diaspora
• The Art of Forgetting by Lisa Kois – Director’s Introduction and Previews
• Lisa Kois’s film The Art of Forgetting – A Review
• Longing and Belonging series: From London to Jaffna for the first time

Furthermore, I was trying to get from my house to work and the following roads were blocked due to flooding,

1. Duplication Road
2. Reid Avenue
3. Horton Place
4. Both Viharamahadevi – Museum Roundabouts
5. Thurstan Road
6. Thunmulla Junction

It continues to rain and Colombo continues to flood!

View Colombo flooding in a larger map

Update, 15 May 2010: Taken by Deshan Tennekoon, more photos of the flooding published on Groundviews here.

• Images from a flooded capital
• Messages by people in Manampitiya and Dimbulagala on flood relief
• On Flooding and Disaster Management
• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• Breaking News: IDPs in Zone 3 and 4 in Menik Camp affected by flooding

Abhilash Jeyaraj who is usually very shy to meet visitors waits with his mother Junita Jeyaraj at their gate. He wears a pair of jeans and long sleeve tshirt with stripe and neatly combed hair. His big smile invites me immediately, while he holds my hands and directs me through the main entrance of the house. He calls his cousin Thulanika Uthayaramesh and they begin to play cricket in the courtyard at dusk. His mother joins them. Abhilash is excited and begins to bat as quickly as possible.

“My favourite subject is English. I like to play cricket with my cousin” says smiling Abhilash. As the sun sets its rays, he quite often hits the soft ball over the wall for six runs. He enjoys playing cricket.

“I am very sad and worried when people call my son as “Tsunami Baby” at his school and village. On the other hand, I am helpless as I am unable to do anything to change the attitude of the people. We have given him a nice name-Abhilash, which means aspiration or desire or wish ” says Junita Jeyaraj while her voice breaks down and tears fill her both eyes and rolls down her cheeks.

“Abhilash wakes up at nights and asks us “Why do people call me “Tsunami Baby”?. We do not have any answer for his question except to say that, they do not mean to call you by that name” mentions in his gentle voice Murugupillai Jeyaraj while joining the conversation. His parents shared their agony when Abhilash plays cricket with his cousin in the courtyard. They do not want him to listen what they discuss. They are concerned when he grows up, if the people still keep calling or identifying him as “Tsunami Baby”, it will affect their son Abhilash. Both Junita and Jeyaraj discussed about it and decided to describe it to their son later when Abhilash is able to understand what happened to him in Tsunami. His parents are carefully preserving the newspaper clippings, cds of photos and videos to show him and tell the true story in a few years. His parents do not like their son to be called “Tsunami Baby” or “Baby 81” anymore. They want him to be called Abhilash.

History
Baby Abhilash Jeyaraj was admitted at the Kalmunai Base Hospital after Tsunami stuck the Eastern coastal belt in December 2004. He was given a number Baby81; from then onwards he was called Baby 81.

He was reunited with his parents on Valentines’ Day (14.02.2005) after almost two months. Junita and Jeyaraj were happy to get their child back nearly after two months (52 days) of continuous battle. He was separated from his parents and their house in Kalmunai was washed away. Parents continued to fight to get their child back. DNA test was carried out in Colombo and it was proven Baby Abhilash belongs to Junita and Jeyaraj.

Baby Abilash hit the headlines locally and internationally after Tsunami. He was two months when he was washed away with waves. Luckily baby Abhilash survived, but the bitter battle continued till he was handed over through Kalmunai Magistrate Courts to his parents. Little Abhilash Jeyaraj was the centre of attraction in late 2004 and early 2005. He and his parents flew to United States of America to participate in a popular television show in 2005.

“Our son Abhilash brought fame to us. But our neighbours and relatives think the fame brought money as well, which is not true and causes a lot of painful. If we have got enough money, we will be leading a luxury life without any problem. I am unable to effort to send my son to a famous school in Batticaloa town or admit him at an institute where he can study in English medium. The media followed and flocked us wherever we went earlier, now nobody cares. Many promises and pledges were made by various people to help us in the future. But nothing materialized so far, except my own younger sister gave her empty land to me, and a Non-Governmental Organisation built a three roomed house on that land. But that particular organisation could not finish the house, therefore it is incomplete, and I do not have money to do plastering for the house and buy the necessary household items. No other organization or individuals want to help me to complete the house, because it was built by another organisation. My priority is to educate my son, and I want to see him as a doctor. I work hard at my roadside barber saloon and earn Rs.15,000/= monthly. I managed to pay-off the debt, I got from many people while going through the hard time in 2004 and 2005” explains Murugupillai Jeyaraj while keeping his son Abhilash on his lap.

Murugupillai Jeyaraj (35) and his wife Junita Jeyaraj (30) lived in Kalmunai after they married, and till the Tsunami shook the coastal line. Later, they have abandoned their destroyed house in Kalmunai as they do not want to be reminded of bad memories of Tsunami. They currently live in half completed house in Kurukkalmadam, and looking forward to a better future for their son Abhilash. It is their biggest dream!

From Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai in Kurukkalmadam

• The Publicity Baby
• Prices Improve In Jaffna
• Unshed Tears
• Superstitions in the 21st century: Of black pottu, politicians and punools
• A Wave of Relief