Archive for the ‘Media and Communications’

In conversation with Chandana Sirimalwatte

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Chandana Sirimalwatte is the Editor of the Lanka newspaper, and recipient of this year’s Sepala Gunasena Award for Defending Press Freedom in Sri Lanka, awarded by the Editors Guild. The interview was conducted a day before Gnanasundaram Kuhanathan, News Editor of Tamil Daily Uthayan was attacked with iron rods in Jaffna. Chandana’s been arrested, interrogated by the CID and has had his press sealed. In October 2009, he was arrested for ‘arousing the general public against the Government’. A day after the Presidential election in January 2010, he was again arrested because he and his newspaper backed Gen. Sarath Fonseka during the campaign. This was the basis for a question asked, whether media should be so overtly partisan. We talk about the freedom of expression, how Chandana started in journalism, what keeps him going and despite serious threats, in Sri Lanka, what he sees as the future of journalism including the publication of critical material online and how what role…

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

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Visualisation of our Twitter followers. See larger version here. We used the web service Tweet Book to capture all our tweets over the past year in a single PDF. We’ve tweeted thousands of times over the past twelve months and have covered, The media fallout of the farcical fast of senior government Minister Wimal Weerawansa in front of the UN HQ in Colombo. Praise for our model of journalism on C-SPAN video in the US, captured from an event at the United States Institute of Peace. Key statements by world leaders like Desmond Tutu on post-war reconciliation and accountability for war crimes Bell Pottinger’s sickening relationship with the incumbent government, largely hidden from public scrutiny Key reports on Sri Lanka from, inter alia, HRW, AI, ICG and the US State Department, including responses from senior Ministers and the Foreign Ministry Foreign relations and the tussle in Sri Lanka between India and China The court proceedings on Sarath Fonseka The UNP’s perennial…

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Exclusive interview with Callum McCrae, Director of ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ produced by Channel 4

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Groundviews caught up with Callum McCrae, Director of the highly controversial and very disturbing film by Channel 4, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, in New York, a day before the film was due to be screened for senior diplomats, UN staff and others at the Church Centre, in front of the UN Headquarters. Callum was joined by Marion Bentley, Channel 4′s Publicity Manager. The interview is around 43 minutes. Download the MP3 (~51Mb) of this interview here to listen offline. This podcast is anchored to the following questions. General What was your objective in doing the C4 video now, more than 2 years after the end of the war? Killing of unarmed civilians, collateral damage, has occurred in other wars, other contexts British troops have been involved in? Has C4 covered them in as great detail? What is accountability for you? Do they think the video will help in achieving accountability in the SL case? How so? Who is your primary…

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Groundviews blocked in Sri Lanka (Updated)

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Update, 7.40pm: As we note in our tweet, we wish the Sri Lankan government made up its mind! This site, Vikalpa and even Transparency International’s site are now unblocked on SLT ADSL. The technical information below still stands, and can in the event of any future block, be used to access site content easily. ### Update, 12.10am, 22nd June: The following was sent out by email today to our local and international readership. On 20th June, for a number of hours in Sri Lanka, Groundviews was completely inaccesible over Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) ADSL broadband connections. Since it began operations in 2006, this was the first time the site was completely inaccessible over an ISP in Sri Lanka. Reader reports from across Sri Lanka confirmed the site could not be reached, as well as the fact that over ISPs like Dialog and Etisalat, the site continued to work fine. The founder and co-editor of Groundviews, in New York at the…

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Sri Lanka’s Post-War Crisis: War Crimes and Channel 4

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Following the broadcast of ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ on the 14th of June and its public release – for seven days – on Channel 4’s website, there has been an overwhelming international reaction to what has been described as ‘brutal,’ ‘horrific’ and ‘shocking’ footage of war crimes. In an effort to collate the reportage following the release of the documentary, we have created a bundle that features the most significant news reports, blogs, comments and videos by international networks, which have been published on the web over the last few days. We have clipped several sources that include responses by ambassadors, civil servants and soi-disant advisors to the government. The news agencies featured in the bundle include the Guardian, New Statesman, Independent, Telegraph, Hindu, Hindustan Times, International Business Times and numerous other sources including leading blogs from Sri Lanka. Groundviews will continue to curate the bundle and upload new reports as soon as they are published. Please note that each…

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Watch Moving Images at Kandy International Film Festival (KIFF)

Compelling stories in high-definition

We are very pleased to announce that films from Moving Images will be part of the first Kandy International Film Festival (KIFF). Though the official schedule is still being finalised, we have been informed by the organisers that Moving Images will be screened from 4 – 6pm on Saturday, 25th at the Kandy City Centre. A moderated discussion will follow. The selection of films will be from A Lost White Tribe: The Eurasians of Sri Lanka by Menika van der Poorten and Koothu, kerosene and paper: portraits of resilience by Kannan Arunasalam. Please join us. Ticketing information for KIFF can be accessed here. The Kandy Film Festival will be a four-day celebration of global cinema, with a special focus on Asian film and upcoming talent, in the UNESCO world heritage city of Kandy, Sri Lanka. Against a stunning background of gardens, hilltops and cultural architecture, the Festival will showcase an exciting program of films celebrating diverse techniques, styles and themes…

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Floating Spaces: Theatre and censorship in Sri Lanka

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Some of the best conversations featured on this site have been with those involved in the arts in Sri Lanka. Noted theatre personalities featured on Groundviews to date include Tracy Holsinger, Mohamed Adamaly and the iconic Iranganie Serasinghe. Jake Oorloff joins this august list, and as Co-Creative Director of Floating Space Theatre Company, his work has been reviewed and featured on Groundviews before. Gaza Monologues, produced for the first time in late 2010, was reviewed here and an interview with Jake and Ruhanie Perera, the co-founder of the Company, was featured here. A review of ‘My Other History’, their most recent production on post-war reconciliation in Sri Lanka appears here. We ask Jake why a few years ago he started a new theatre company, when there were already quite a few established ones around, which then led into a discussion around Jake’s approach to theatre and acting. Jake explains what theatre is for him and what in general theatre is,…

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Finding the Middle Ground

Just over a week ago, a couple of my colleagues and I appeared on a prominent Canadian talk show discussing our attempts, as both individuals and organizing members of the Young Canadians’ Peace Dialogue on Sri Lanka hosted by the Mosaic Institute, to find a middle ground with respect to the relationship of the Canadian Diaspora to the internal politics in Sri Lanka. Joining us on the show was Craig Scott, a renowned professor on international humanitarian law and R. Cheran, a high-profile Tamil Canadian academic and journalist. Amongst both our friends and the wider Canadian community, the panel discussion has been acknowledged as an example of an exercise in ‘truth telling’ rather than ‘finger pointing.’  During the half-hour discussion, key points in relation to understanding the mentality of the Diaspora were raised such the role of ethnic affiliation in adopted sides and the emotional intensity felt in the Diaspora during the last stages in the war. Perhaps more importantly, participants also…

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The continuing disinformation campaigns in Sri Lanka: Is mainstream media complicit?

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For the second time in a fortnight, subscribers to the Daily Mirror newspaper have been entreated to an interesting disinformation campaign that appears to be conducted with those embedded within, and possibly with the full support of the Sri Lankan Army and its network of patriots. The full page ad above was published on the Daily Mirror on 23rd May. A high resolution scan can be downloaded here. At the bottom, the advertisement is attributed to the ‘Free Mass Media Movement’. No such movement exists, or has existed. With the clear intention to obfuscate rather than enlighten, the name is a spin off from the Free Media Movement, which for a variety of reasons, is well known to government and also amongst media freedom activists. To be fair, the concerns expressed therein about the handling of Osama Bin Laden’s murder raise very serious concerns over the ability of the United States to practice the very policies and practices it preaches…

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Going beyond mainstream media: The best Twitter feeds on and from Sri Lanka

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Just over a year ago, in April 2010, Groundviews launched two curated Twitter lists on Sri Lanka to help those in and outside the country access news, information and critical conversations that went far beyond mainstream media’s economic and partisan shackles. One list featured some of the most compelling bloggers in Sri Lanka. The other, a list of news sources and Twitter accounts of journalists. Because they are oriented towards an international audience, the lists largely capture content published in English, though feeds like @vikalpavoices publish mostly in Sinhala. Coupled with our own feed, the two lists are comprehensive and by the very nature of the medium, constantly updated windows into issues, processes and events mainstream media could not, or would not cover. And even when they did, the Twitter updates on these feeds added new perspectives and often, information vital to understand context. On occasion, they have also served to hold mainstream media – both domestic and international –…

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A review of ‘The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lankan & The Last Days of the Tamil Tigers’

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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…

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Elephant Walk revisited: Mixing Tea, Jumbos and Monsoons

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[Editors note: For an in-depth interview on Sri Lanka's human-elephant conflict, see Humans vs. elephants: Sri Lanka’s tragic on-going conflict] If those hardy Englishmen and Scotsmen who ran large tea plantations in Ceylon were far removed from the local people and realities, western movie makers were much more so. They could just as well have come from another planet to catch glimpses of an exotic island. But feature film makers everywhere enjoy the artistic license to create whole new worlds, and we willingly suspend our disbelief when watching their creations. Elephant Walk (103 mins, colour), released by Paramount Pictures in April 1954, may not be the most artistic or technically perfect movie from that era. Yet, more than half a century after it was shot on location in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the film can still hold an audience captivated with a sense of drama and intrigue. Elephant Walk was directed by William Dieterle, and based on the 1948 novel with…

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umbrella over bird

for prageeth eknaligoda   we didn’t know we stopped: the undoing doing its disappearing the man himself —disappearing gone. what to do? muttering him through corners, hyde park; lincoln immemorial; where we said speakers should stand; silver shadow moves for coins in times squared, because we cannot hold the hands of clocks. which hand tips land’s hat into sea?—shriek your bids; speak freely in kingdoms measured carefully suns shining. no rain they say: still, insist on umbrella over bird, though feathers fall fallow, shedding wings widowed, shorn but not shamed. under wings, through windows, hold the hands of clocks—himself to draw himself to draw himself—( disappearing) , and once more, upon an anthem now: light us from the inside out, on the face of the galle clock green with time: the salt marching up from the sea, our wounds filling with it.

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The Reckoning: Press Freedom in Sri Lanka

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Cartoon by Carlos Latuff “The freedom to speak and the freedom to write are essential preconditions for the transition towards democracy and good governance” – Irina Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO. We are living in the world, in which committed journalists writes the news not only with ink, but also with their blood. This is the very reason that their souls still exists with us even after their tragic deaths. Sri Lanka is the very recent example for such context.  Thirty-four journalists and media workers have been killed with no recourse to justice since the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government came into power in April 2004 with the present President Mahinda Rajapaksa as its prime minister. [1] This list does not include the comprehensive details of the journalist and media workers who were killed in Vanni during the last phase of the war (North of Sri Lanka), which was labeled as “world’s largest rescue operation”. Journalists were murdered not for anything, but simply…

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ICTs, science fiction and disasters: A conversation with Nalaka Gunawardene

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I last spoke to Nalaka Gunawardene on public television in February 2009. Nalaka’s varied interests and experience is hard to pin down, but the issues he most often writes on are anchored to science and technology, including information and communications technologies (ICTs). Nalaka blogs and he tweets, which is rare among the guests I have on the programme. He is a regular contributor to Groundviews, a public speaker and frequent commentator on other old and new media fora, including the Sinhala language media. A lot had happened since we last spoke, from natural disasters (Pakistan floods, Japan earthquake) to the heightened use of social media around the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the Royal Wedding. Also between the time we last spoke, Assange spilt the beans on US diplomacy and more recently, local media created mass hysteria with a botched attempt at covering untested science. All of these are issues Nalaka’s written on. At the beginning of the interview,…

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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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