Archive for the ‘Issues’

  • 30 Dec, 2012
  • 5 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Politics and Governance

Can anti-corruption campaigners justify impeachment of the Chief Justice?

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Photo courtesy PressTV There was much publicity given in state media, run by a group of well-known hate campaigners, that the impeachment of the Chief Justice is the right thing  in the anti-corruption discourse and that that Sri Lanka can be proud of such an impeachment. We are not at all surprised with this line of crusades, particularly at a crucial time in our history when the government will do anything possible under the sun to use its hidden investments and human resources. Firstly, no sensible person will disagree that any allegations against a judge must be investigated.  Such allegations must be investigated by an impartial and independent body and within a framework of the Rule of Law. The objections from the lawyers and others against the current impeachment on the Chief Justice is that the entire impeachment process is politically motivated  and has been done without following the basic principles of natural justice or Rule of Law. Secondly, there…

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Encounters with Upper Echelons

TheRock

“What is the similarity between President Mahinda Rajapakse and our former President Dingiri Banda Wijetunge?” the Sri Lankan Tamil man, Sivapuranam Thevaram, of whom I have told you much in these pages (for example see the story about his stolen bicycle by clicking here), asked me during one of our regular drinking sessions in BridgeTown, UK. I was clueless. One is of a gentleman type, who rose to the occasion when his predecessor Ranasinghe Premadasa was assassinated, served his term and gracefully went into retirement, making no attempt to cling to power and wealth in the interest of himself or his friends and family. The other was once a heroic human rights activist, who, during the dark days of the second JVP rebellion when a large number of our youth were being brutally killed, attempted to bring those to the attention of the wider world by bravely smuggling records out of the Colombo airport to Geneva. What similarity does this…

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Racing Tanks with Bicycles: A Parable of ‘Reconciliation’ in Sri Lanka

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Photo via Facebook photo set by Akiy Photography, direct link here. Note that original photo does not blur the face of the child. Some photographs of ‘aid’ being provided to Sri Lankan Tamils in Keppapilavu were recently posted online. The Keppapilavu community were the last to be released from the Menik Farm Camp, but were not allowed to return home, and instead were forcibly re-displaced into the wilderness. The aid was being provided by a youth group called ‘Sri Lanka Unites’ – whose objective is to promote reconciliation in Sri Lanka, in collaboration with the ‘Foundation of Goodness’ – a charity set up by a few Sri Lankan cricketers. Four thoughts came to mind while browsing the pictures: The scenes depicted were reminiscent of aid campaigns that characterised Africa in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Benevolent philanthropists extending a charitable arm to needy and helpless victims. Affluence meeting impoverishment, with the brash arrogance of those who have – that those who…

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Post-Mullivaaikkaal governance in Sri Lanka: Towards a totalitarian state

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Image courtesy Lanka Standard The present crisis engulfing the Jaffna University may be a turning point for the Tamil politics and Sri Lankan politics at large. There are three important issues, I would like to deduce from this stalemate, which are necessary to gauge the trajectory of post-war Tamil politics in Sri Lanka. Two of those issues are very familiar ones, that is because of the very reason, in Sri Lanka we have had repeated failures in achieving a dignified political settlement in the past. And the third one is an entirely new and alarming phenomenon that is unique to the post-Mullivaaikkaal governance structure of the Sri Lankan state. This new governance is misleadingly called as ‘militarization’ in the popular discourse without realising the conceptual and theoretical elucidation. Obviously, I would like to dwell in the third one in detail after a brief sketch of first two issues. Firstly, this crisis will lead to the delegitimization and destruction of Tamil…

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The almost forgotten LLRC report and the Sri Lankan psyche

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Publicity shot from late-2011, depicting the President of Sri Lanka ‘reading’ the LLRC’s Final Report. Comprehension and cognition remain suspect.  Some years ago while on a visit from abroad, my niece was entertained and perhaps a little shocked when she overheard comments broadcast over the loudspeaker from a nearby school. It was the day of their annual sports meet and a teacher, obviously short – tempered, screamed into the microphone at some hapless students, “Magay yakaawe aussande epaa”. When translated into English, “Don’t rouse the devil in me” it loses colour and pith but in its original Sinhala form, her words and tone of voice, packed quite a punch. Reading the newspapers today, I am reminded of the words of that teacher. It seems that it takes very little to raise the sleeping devil in the Sri Lankan psyche. Any hint of criticism directed at our fragile egos and we are ready and willing to take umbrage. Is this part…

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  • 23 Dec, 2012
  • 15 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Politics and Governance

Keynote Address at Judges’ Conference by Justice Wigneswaran

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Photo courtesy Lanka Standard Keynote Address at Judges’ Conference on 22nd December 2012 by Justice Wigneswaran. For an in-depth interview with Justice Wigneswaran, conducted one year ago, click here. Download the speech as a PDF here. Judicial Service Association of Sri Lanka Repost This Article

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Giving reconciliation in Sri Lanka a better chance: A Shadow Action Plan for the LLRC

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Image courtesy Centre for Human Rights The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) Final Report contains many positive recommendations which merit immediate attention. Unfortunately, the present administration has given virtually no indication that it has any intention of seriously engaging with these recommendations. With the impeachment of the Chief Justice, the unwarranted arrest of University of Jaffna students and the recent murder of dozens of Welikada inmates, it’s obvious that human rights trends in Sri Lanka are still moving in the wrong direction. Furthermore, Government – TNA talks have gone nowhere; this is a political negotiation on life support that looks more like absurd theatre than a genuine discussion. All of this is extremely unfortunate, but underscores the fact that the present administration fears the political consequences of truly endorsing national reconciliation and promoting a lasting peace. Now, the present administration is seeking to strike a balance. It wants to avoid further criticism of its human rights record by pretending…

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Echoes of Cuba

Money

Photo by Kuni Takahashi/Bloomberg, via Bloomberg I walk the hills rising from an azure blue Caribbean sea, and try to envision the history that I have been told, a history of an island, green, tropical, rich in resources that fell into a despotic military aided rule. The consequence of a power drunk ruler who made it easy for his cronies to move money across its borders and legalized gambling to facilitate the Mafia to launder its ill-gotten money from the US. The underworld became the lords and the land went out of reach for ordinary citizens. This history spoke of a small group of dedicated people, who struggled through incredible odds and fuelled by a shining love for their country, won the nation back from the underworld.  Their actions confirming the observation of the Qu’ran that,  ‘ the love of country is the love of faith’. It was an impossibly small boat that arrived on the shores of Cuba with its…

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Eating properly and smiling: The evasive Valerie Amos on Twitter

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On 18th December 2012, at around 10pm in Sri Lanka, Valerie Amos, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator took to Twitter, ostensibly to answer questions related to the UN’s role, relevance and responsibilities regarding humanitarian aid and relief work. The event with Baroness Amos was announced via the Twitter account of, inter alia, UN OCHA, which also had a photo of her in front of a laptop, getting ready to face the questions. RT @unocha: .@valerieamos is now replying to questions from @alertnet and Twitter users around the world. #AskValerietwitpic.com/bn3zd4 — Groundviews (@groundviews) December 18, 2012 The event was conducted with the hashtag #AskValerie. Baroness Amos is (whether through office aides or by herself it remains unclear) fairly active on Twitter via @ValerieAmos. However, despite her own and OCHA’s familiarity with web based social media interactions, yesterday’s Twitter question time with Baroness Amos was a cogent example of how not to curate and conduct public debates…

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Writing to Reconcile in Sri Lanka

Shyam Selvadurai 2012-13

Image courtesy Green College I interviewed over email the award-winning author Shyam Selvadurai on a new initiative called Write to Reconcile, of which he is Project Director. Groundviews featured an in-depth interview with Shyam in mid-2011, when he was the curator of the Galle Literary Festival. Write to Reconcile is his brainchild, and I was curious to find out what drove him to think of it, and the challenges around doing this kind of work in a country post-war, but very far removed from a just peace. ### What gave rise to this idea? I first began to think of the project during the last Galle Literary Festival. While I enjoyed many aspects of my job as Festival Curator, the thing I enjoyed most this year was taking the children’s author and story teller, Jeeva Ragunath, to Jaffna to do storytelling workshops there. The response of both students and teachers there really moved me and made me want to do something…

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Canadian Senator Hon. Hugh Segal on impeachment of Chief Justice in Sri Lanka

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Image courtesy Flickr Debates of the Senate (Hansard) 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Volume 148, Issue 130 Wednesday, December 12, 2012 Hon. Hugh Segal: Honourable senators, the recent and further steps by the Government of Sri Lanka to impeach their Chief Justice should concern all Commonwealth citizens and governments. Clear Commonwealth values around the rule of law and democracy as expressed in the Harare Declaration and the Latimer House Principles embraced by all Commonwealth heads of government in 1991 and 2003 are being violated by this present and unconstitutional impeachment effort. Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma was in contact with the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister on this issue on December 10. We appreciate that contact very much. Today, President Rajapaksa announced that he would appoint an independent panel to review the findings of the parliamentary report. There is much to review in terms of the questionable way in which the investigation was handled, the lack of time for defence preparation by Chief…

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  • 13 Dec, 2012
  • 36 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Features,
    Politics and Governance

The Parliamentary Select Committee is a mistrial: Annul the impeachment report

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Photo courtesy The Hindu “Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed inviolable to the Revolution of 1848, makes some tolerant of revolution and makes others lust for it, and produces anarchy in the name of order, while at the same time stripping the entire state machinery of its halo, profaning it and making it at once loathsome and ridiculous.”   (Karl Marx in Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1852) We need an independent committee or a panel of judges not to evaluate the report of the Parliamentary Select Committee report but to examine whether its conduct is consistent with the law and the accepted national and international norms about impeaching judges. The impeachment proceedings so far should be declared a mistrial (i.e. a trial rendered invalid through improper and prejudicial errors in the proceedings leading to a leading to the impossibility of an impartial resolution) because in any civilized society a person cannot be tried twice…

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Reflections on ‘Widows’ and ‘Unearthed’

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Work and travel kept me from writing about two significant theatre productions in the past month. Ariel Dorfman’s ‘Widows’ directed by Feroze Kamardeen and produced by Sirraj Abdul Hameed was staged at the Wendt from 23-25 of November. ‘Unearthed’, billed as a site-specific theatre and dance journey through a private home, was directed by Ruhanie Perera (from Floating Space Theatre Company) and Sally E. Dean, performed on 1st and 2nd December in Kotte and produced by Iromi Perera and Silke Arnold. The staging of ‘Widows’ can be appreciated through two distinct lenses – the text in the context of post-war Sri Lanka, and the actual performance on stage. A review by Charles Isherwood in the New York Times of a production in 2008 in the New York Times ends by noting that though, “many have suffered (and continue to suffer)…cruel treatment”,  ‘Widows’ “signally fails to bring the horror of it home.” Karmardeen’s production doesn’t fare any better in communicating the…

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Will the Tamils Lose the Plot Again?

Jaffna Sri Lanka

  Photo courtesy Christian Science Monitor Chaos and Fear Much has happened in the space of three months. Soon after the Eastern Provincial Council election came the Divi Neguma bill and the subsequent calls for the abolition of the 13th Amendment. The impeachment motion against the Chief Justice and the recruitment of Tamil women to the military followed before the Maveerar Naal (Heroes’ Day) incidents in Jaffna. It would seem that the government is bent on creating chaos and fear. The Present State of Affairs In response to the negative Supreme Court verdict on the Divi Neguma bill, the government did two things: it unleashed a strong call for the abolition of the 13th Amendment to the constitution and set the wheels in motion to impeach the Chief Justice. It is highly unlikely that the company of Gotabaya, Wimal and Champika made a spontaneous decision to go public with a demand that strikes at the very heart of power devolution:…

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Updates on ground situation in Jaffna

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After the violent unrest that started late November in Jaffna, (for photos and background, read The death of Freedom of Assembly, Expression and Religion in the North of Sri Lanka), Groundviews has continuously received updates on the ground situation. In addition to forwarding these updates via email, we have decided to post them on the site for increased awareness and greater public debate on the disturbing situation in and around post-war Jaffna today. The updates are posted as we received them and as accounts open t0 contestation. We also strongly welcome further verification and corroboration by readers in the area or familiar with what’s going on. We will continue to update this blog post as we receive new updates. Please follow @groundviews on Twitter for notifications and also see our Facebook page. Situation Update as at 3.55pm, 12 February, 2013 President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is currently on an official visit to Jaffna, is reported to have ordered the release of the…

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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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