Archive for the ‘International Relations’

Maghreb: Mythicising Model, Misapplying Mode

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Photo courtesy Vikalpa The conversation I had on Lankan trajectories and ‘declinist’ discourses in a Paris cafe on a Sunday with my friend and former colleague, Prof. Nira Wickramasingha, now holding the Chair of South Asian History at the University of Leiden, reminded me of a point she had made sharply in her slender book ‘History Writing’. Sri Lanka, she had remarked, was one of the few countries in which mainstream newspapers carried pieces on history by those without any credentials or formal training in the disciplines of history and historiography. This, she wrote, would never happen in India for instance, where any incursion into history in the quality press would have to be backed up with credentials in order to secure publication. What she said of history is just as true of politics. Sri Lankan newspapers and websites are replete with pieces that go beyond intellectually legitimate critical commentary to the pontifically prescriptive and hortatory — almost in inverse…

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Winds of Change 2.0 and its Implications

The sweeping wave of protests over West Asia is refreshing to see twenty-two years after the fall of the Berlin wall. The demise of repressive communist regimes in Eastern Europe was not due to the direct intervention of the west, but the overall impact of home grown people’s power movements, which gathered pace as the USSR was weakened by the inherent failures of the Marxist economic model. History does seem to be repeating itself, but what had led to enduring democracies in the Eastern Europe nearly two decades ago may in the present context usher in fundamentalists as an alternative to the corrupt dictatorships that ruled these countries with the overt blessing of the west, in contrast to those countries behind the Iron Curtain. However, one cannot put these changes to a set pattern as the socio-economic context in each of these countries differs significantly. The situation in Egypt is still volatile. The majority of its population is poor and…

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The Curious Case of Diplomats & that ‘Internal Conflict’

We are in the USA, far away from Sri Lanka. Dr. Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN (in New York), had this to say: “We have come to a point where we don’t need to be defensive. As a country we need to be proud, we need to reach out, we need to look outwards, and express ourselves in a confident manner…” Important words, expressed after Sri Lanka’s Independence Day celebrations. We are in Sri Lanka, far away from the USA. Things do not seem to be easy, the message is of a different nature; a call to be defensive (or offensive? or both?). The Prime Minister had the following to say, in Parliament: that the government has been informed that plans are being made by certain LTTE sympathizers and other elements in the Tamil diaspora in Europe to raise ‘war-crimes’ allegations, again, at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. This, I believe, is not…

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It is ubiquitous Februaries, not that unique Leninist October that counts

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Photo courtesy Al Jazeera. Taken on 11 February 2011, Al Jazeera notes that a crowd of thousands marched back toward Tahrir Square from the presidential palace, young men sprinted along the streets and through the grassy median separating the wide boulevard, trailing Egyptian flags behind them. Grinning drivers waved and held their hands in peace signs through their windows. Celebrating protesters set of fireworks and lit giant streams of aerosol spray on fire. ### When the angry classes and the hungry classes join to make common cause, mass democratic, spontaneous, uprisings break out. That is the lesson now sweeping across the Maghreb and the Middle East. Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has fled; Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak has been pushed out but may still be strung from a lamppost; the Jordanian cabinet has been fired, and the streets are aflame in Algiers and Yemen. For sclerotic autocrats it’s time to panic. The crisis has been there for decades; political repression,…

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Sethu Samudram: Bridging art, history and human relations

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“Sethu Samudram” is a three-year collaborative art project and a dialog-making platform between Theertha International Artists Collective, Colombo, Sri Lanka and 1Shanthi Road in Bangalore, India. “Sethu Samudram” is the name of the mythical bridge found in Ramayana, meaning the bridge across the ocean. This bridge connects Sri Lanka and India. There is substantial amount of good reasons to believe the existence of a real “Sethu Samudram”– a bridge across the ocean – between the two geographies in the ancient times, not only conceptually but also physically. This naturally-formed ancient bridge in the Palk Strait has acquired numerous mythical dimensions through millennia. South India is only 22 miles across the Palk Strait from North of Sri Lanka. Considering the proximity of South India to Sri Lanka, even without much hard arguments, the possibility of cultural exchanges and human migration between these two geographical zones for millennia can be an obvious presumption. Now a construction of a real human-made bridge is scheduled…

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An Era of Sri Lanka’s President: From Mullivaikal to Oxford Union

[Authors note: Mullivaikal is where the last phase of the war between Sri Lankan Armed Forces (SLAF) and Liberation Tiger of TamilEelam (LTTE) took place.  According to the Government of Sri Lanka, this was the place war came to an end with the military defeat of LTTE, but for majority Tamils and international human rights activists, this was the place at-least 30000-40000 Tamil civilians were massacred by SLAF. The ‘controversy’ began from here and continues even after 19 months.] The Diaspora re-emergence President Rajapakse, the man who tamed the Tamil Tigers faced his first “Political Waterloo” since he came to the power.  Rajapakse and his family have portrayed themselves as an undefeated regime in the region until the President faced the fiasco in London in early December. This development transpired as outrageous war crimes and crime against humanity evidence have been revealed in the wake of submission to the UN expert panel deadline approached and the president visited to London…

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Julian Assange’s turn for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011

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Photo courtesy Wired A week or so ago, a veteran editor cum journalist in a conversation on conflict and peace said, his choice for the next peace prize is Julian Assange. Agreed. But what qualifies a person for the Nobel Prize for Peace ? Alfred Nobel said it must be awarded to the person who “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding of peace congresses” in his last will left dated, 27th November, 1895. Nominations for this most prestigious world prize for peace, from among 300 other prizes awarded around the world, is drawing to a close on 01st February, 2011. The question is, can Julian Assange of WikiLeaks be nominated and is he qualified for nominations? With Liu Xiaobo of China awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace this 2010 year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has, from the first Nobel Peace Prize…

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Thanks, Guys

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Liu Xiaobo , Winner of Nobel Peace Prize 2010, “ CHRD Vassals, serfs, dependent states, including erstwhile defenders of human rights, we appreciate and respect your well-considered decisions to absent yourselves from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies for the common prisoner who shall not here be named, who has filled pages of certain duplicitous democracies with his seditious ideas. He will remain in jail and the Middle Kingdom shall prosper without end.

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The ‘Godayata magic’ of Oxford

Occidentalism: in the thrall of the “West“ The “Godayata magic“ of Oxford There is a storm engulfing this country “ not the incessant rains and consequent floods that have brought much suffering especially to the rural poor and urban slum dwellers. Rather, it is a storm over the failure of our Head of State (somehow “President“ seems inadequate to describe Our Great Leader) to gain access to the podium of a student debating society in a distant foreign land “ a debating society that does not even speak our languages at that! This comment focuses on the cultural contradiction we are seeing being acted out in this reversal of Orientalism: the plague of Occidentalism. All the hue and cry and Parliamentary fisticuffs currently on-going seems to be about expressing outrage at this humiliating exclusion, condoling the Great Leader for his great loss, probing the causes of this huge debacle, identifying the operational lapses that led to it, and finding and…

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DIASPORA EXTREMISM, INDIA, CHINA & SRI LANKA

“A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to “liquidate“ or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred and allied groups.“ “ Gramsci The Wiki leaks mega “dump“ is an international relations s analyst“s dream. It is also great fun, don“t you think? Consider this: if leaking diplomatic cables and stuff pertaining to past events evokes a howl of condemnation from the metropolis for giving comfort to enemies of western states, and endangering national security and personnel, how can Sri Lanka be faulted for preventing real time coverage of the war, and especially its concluding stages? Furthermore, if the Wiki Leaks exposures are quite so heinous and damaging, why pressurise Sri Lanka to hold an independent international inquiry into the war? Won“t that compromise national security and affect the lives of military personnel? Or is it that some lives and secrets are far more important than Sri Lankan ones? The massive WikiLeaks detonation took place in…

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Interview with Bradman Weerakoon

Deshamanya Bradman Weerakoon, who turned 80 recently, is an elder statesman in Sri Lanka and one of the oldest living civil servants in the country. During over half a century of public service, Bradman served nine Sri Lankan heads of State. It is frankly impossible in 24 minutes to capture this wealth of experience. What the discussion did concentrate was on key chapters in Bradman’s life. Bradman’s answers are always measured and diplomatic. We began by discussing the pregnant title of his memoirs, Rendering Unto Ceasar, placing it in Biblical context (from Matthew 22:21) and going on to explore why Bradman embraced Buddhism when he was around 18. We then discussed the Tamil pogrom of 1983, where the then President made Bradman the first Commissioner General of Essential Services (CGES). I asked Bradman how it felt like to work on humanitarian aid and relief within a government, and indeed a President, widely known in later years to have condoned the…

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“Chiran Jayathu” – “Aayubowewa”

Let all as citizens comprising the civil society of Sri Lanka, join together in unison and with one voice, in response to the earnest appeal made by Renton de Alwis in “Back to Basics” stating “Our President is taking on the next phase of his governance. There is so much more he has to do to guide this nation on. For that we must wish him well and more importantly, resolve that there is so much each of us as individuals and as one big family of 20 million people can and must do, to help ourselves” and wish H.E. the President on his birthday and assumption of his second term of office saying “Chiran Jayathu” and “Aayubowewa”, Happy Birthday and All the Very Best, thus expressing sincere appreciation of his leadership and governance of the past and also for the expected delivery in the future as supported by the following: “I am proud to announce that my country has…

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Ariyasinha urges NGOs to change strategy: A response

Image courtesy South Asia Foreign Relations Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the EU, Ravinatha Aryasinha says that NGOs need to complement the work done by Sri Lanka in a post-conflict environment, where reconstruction and development takes precedence and either their inability or refusal to accept this stark reality has led to misunderstandings and disagreements between NGOs and the government. the truth is that the govt wants all funds of NGO’s for R&D to be chanelled thru govt that’s where the problem lies Ambassador Ariyasinghe delivering the Olcott Memorial lecture on Saturday in Colombo called for “greater differentiation between NGOs on the part of government, as well as  better coordination between the government authorities and NGOs operating within the country. Additionally, screening of  NGOs to ascertain whether the organization as well as its staff are qualified and experienced enough to engage in the work they wish to undertake, and greater accountability on the part of NGOs themselves, can help improve the relationship”….

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Submission before Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Committee (LLRC) by Chandra Jayaratne

[Editors note: Chandra Jayaratne is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka and of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK, a former President of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and LMD Sri Lankan of the year 2001.] ### 1. Appreciation of Opportunity The eminent members of the Commission and its Secretary are thanked for extending, on their own accord, this opportunity to make submissions before the LLRC. These submissions draw on a wide canvass, strictly within the scope of the warrant of the LLRC and stress issues of concern and detail specific action recommendations for due consideration by the Commission. The LLRC is kindly requested to note that all submissions made herein are based on personal beliefs and commitments and does not represent views of any of the present or past affiliations and positions of leadership held in any private sector or civil society organizations. 2. The Immediate Correction of the Lost Opportunity The opportune…

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Getting lost in The Hague: UN, Sri Lanka and an ICJ-Advisory Opinion

Dr. Lakshman Marasinghe (Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Windsor) in an article titled ‘Some Random Thoughts on the UN International Advisory Panel’ (Daily Mirror, 14 July, 2010), makes a serious suggestion to the Government; i.e. to obtain an Advisory Opinion (AO) from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, to determine “whether it was within the power of the Secretary-General to appoint an Advisory Panel mandated as he has when appointing it.” He admits that he is “unable to suggest a political solution” to what he considers to be a matter which raises an “interesting point of international law.” Dr. Marasinghe’s suggestion, in turn, raises greater problems, and is a risk that Sri Lanka cannot afford to take at this stage. The unresolved ‘problem within a problem’ An AO from the ICJ, even if it is to be ‘favourable’ to Sri Lanka, would not be one which addresses the root of the problem; the problem of accountability…

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About Groundviews

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

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