Archive for the ‘Post-War’

A Realistic Look at the Draft Resolution by the US on Sri Lanka at the UN HRC

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Placard in Sinhala reads ‘Barack, you’re a burden for us’. Photo courtesy Priyantha Wickremarachchi/Ceylon Today The US recently tabled a draft resolution against Sri Lanka is so incredibly weak that President Mahinda Rajapaksa must be breathing a sigh of relief. It is no wonder that the US feels confident that it has the votes in needs. Besides, it is possible that the resolution will be watered down even more in the coming days—making this exercise seem that much more formulaic and pointless. The resolution requests that the government of Sri Lanka implement the recommendations from the Final Report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). In order to achieve this objective, it asks the government to present an outline or roadmap as “expeditiously as possible” so that everyone will know how much progress Sri Lanka is making towards genuine national reconciliation and to addressing purported violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The resolution mentions that…

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THE BIG LIE ABOUT THE US RESOLUTION

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Image from The Nation It is almost a crime to lie to the people and mislead them on a matter of vital national interest. When it is committed by politicians it is an act of unconscionable opportunism. When it is perpetrated by so-called intellectuals belonging to civil society, it is a counterfeiting of the currency of the intellect and the function of the educated, which is to educate the public. One of the rankest untruths in the public domain today is that the US resolution is innocuous and unobjectionable because it only seeks to commit the government of Sri Lanka to implement its own LLRC report within a reasonable time frame. This untruth is perpetrated by the dominant elements of the UNP, the TNA and the civil society commentariat. The utter falsehood of this assertion is instantly provable by a mere glance at the Resolution itself. Far from limiting itself to the harmless and arguably even constructive pursuit of merely…

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Some thoughts on Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished

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Like so many diasporic Sri Lankans I watched it, even staying up late (by my currently low standards that is). Did I think that the first programme was a good thing? Yes. There’s a line, a quandary, a grey area after any conflictual situation. And it’s about what we should just put behind us and forget or accept and what we need to analyse and dissect in order to learn from to move forward. There’s probably no one who would suggest that it’s wise to forget and / or accept absolutely everything, on all sides, and there’s probably no one who would think that’s it’s sensible to analyse and dissect every single thing. But the line has to be drawn somewhere and, for me, much of the positioning of the line has to do with the issue of civilian casualties (which sounds so much more PC than “civilians deaths”). Up until after the showing of the first Killing Fields documentary…

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Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished: Unofficial video now online

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Channel 4′s new documentary on Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished aired for the first time in the UK last night. Before it is even available on Channel 4′s official web based on-demand service, it’s now up on YouTube. It is likely that the video is soon taken down by Youtube over copyright violation claims, and Channel 4 notes the video will be officially available soon. In a series of tweets to Channel 4, we informed that the Adobe Flash based on-demand service of the channel, not just because it won’t play on any Apple iOS device, is far less suitable for the viral dissemination of the video than featuring it, like this unofficial version, on YouTube or Vimeo. Not doing so, and not making the video more easily downloadable, we said severely limited its access within Sri Lanka. We also asked Channel 4 to take a page out of the viral dissemination of KONY 2012. Finally,…

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The Geopolitical Matrix of Sri Lanka’s Conflict

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Image courtesy South Asia Monitor I am appreciative of the fact that this is a seminar on geopolitics. I think geopolitics has been underestimated; perhaps overestimated earlier and then there was a reaction, the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. I am not a geopolitical determinist. I do not believe that geography is destiny. If we look at the case of Cuba for instance, it is very clearly a dramatic rupture from any notion of geopolitical determinism. However, if we have a notion of long term history as recommended by Braudel, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, then we understand the importance of place. We are materially and psychologically constituted at least in part by where we are. Though I would not say that who we are is determined in a monocausal sense by where we are, it is certainly one of the decisive and perhaps one of the determinant factors. So Sri Lanka, as most of us know…

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New censorship of SMS news in Sri Lanka

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A fax issued by the Media Centre for National Security today commands that “any news related to National Security and Security Force, the Police should get prior approval from the Media Centre for National Security before dissemination. Therefore, please be kind enough to follow the above instructions with immediate effect.” See large image of the fax sent to media institutions here. Groundviews was told that these measures were most likely taken after SMS news updates on the recent killing of two soldiers in Jaffna, by another soldier. Among other SMS news alerts, Daily Mirror’s SMS alerts covered the story in three updates, also reflected in their Twitter feed. 3 soilders shot dead in Jaffna bit.ly/AaYyvZ #srilanka #lka — Daily Mirror (@DMbreakingnews) March 9, 2012 The first update was at 8.16am, followed by two more at 8.46am (via a Daily Mirror journalist’s iPhone) and 9.19am. The reason for the death of 3 soldiers in Jaffna was due to a personal dispute…

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Sri Lankan Post-War Cinema and Reconciliation

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In any conflict environment, the audio-visual medium, in particular cinema, is utilized as a dominant tool of propaganda. In the Sri Lankan context, both the State and the LTTE have used the audio visual medium to differing degrees to propagate their ideologies, and to project themselves in a positive light. Cinema that is directly sponsored by the State invariably bears the voice of the State. Likewise, the ‘independent’ cinema, if it is in line with the State ideology, is more likely to garner accolade at State Awards ceremonies, receive promotion in the State media, and be ‘officially recommended’ for public viewing. Some cinematic works, however, are denounced by the State, especially when they tend to refute the State ideology. Cinema’s role does not end with the finale of a war. Notably, it can play a powerful role in post-war endeavours, due to its ability to reach wider audiences irrespective of age, gender, religious and racial boundaries. Cinema’s potential as an…

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Rights, Return & Resettlement: A Critique of the TNA Report on Resettlement

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TNA delegation in Washington DC, 2011 The ‘Resettlement Report October- December 2011’, available on the Tamil National Alliance’s (TNA) temporary website, DBS Jeyraj’s blog and Sangam.org, is the second report of the Tamil National Alliance Research Series, and claims to provide an ‘overview of the return or resettlement of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who were displaced during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka’. The report states that its intention is to ‘examine the status of selected groups of resettled or returned persons in the Vanni region’, in this instance the village of Santhapuram in Kilinochchi. It also focuses on two ‘special issues’- plans to relocate those remaining in Menik Farm to Kombavil, and returns to the released High Security Zones in Jaffna. The initiative taken by the TNA to prepare reports on issues of concern such as resettlement is commendable.  The document is also useful in that it provides information on different villages in each report. Yet,…

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Women’s Day 2012: Concerns, challenges and opportunities from Sri Lanka

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For years, Groundviews has featured content that probes gender from a Sri Lankan perspective. For Women’s Day 2012 we have created a Bundlr bundle of over 35 of the most compelling submissions. The content covers a range of issues, from the outrageous denial of the existence of rape by Sri Lanka’s witless Ambassador to the US Jaliya Wickramasuriya, to the every day violence and abuse faced by women even in Colombo. The articles cover Sri Lanka’s horrible track record of women’s representation in politics and parliament, how vulnerable they are after nearly three decades of war, their role and relevance in reconciliation post-war, how in fact this integral role in reconciliation was marginalised by the LLRC process, how they see themselves and how society perceive them have changed on account of the war, and how innovative ideas to raise public awareness on violence against women can make a difference. One of the most compelling submissions on gender, and indeed, one…

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Forging a Culture of Mutual Tolerance among Sri Lankans: A Path to Reconciliation?

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Photo courtesy Reuters Alertnet “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist” – Friedrich Nietzsche I recently learned that intervening in favor of a “[...] modernist, inclusive Sri Lankan nation that transcends narrow, parochial ethno-cultural identities” (cf. Asanga Welikela’s recent intervention) may unfortunately present you as a Jacobin; especially if you happen to be educated in France; which is apparently by essence revolutionary. One can only imagine my Great Terror after reading such a comment. I still wonder whether Welikela’s approach would have been different had I not been a Sorbonne/Sciences Po educated Sri Lankan. By focusing on the question of “sub-state nations” and by his dismissive position towards secularism, Asanka Welikela’s argumentation displaces my “original position” which has primarily to do with a culture of mutual tolerance and the emergence of Tomorrow’s Sri Lankan, that is to say  “[...] the one who builds…

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Sri Lanka and its ‘Geneva-problem’

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Maria Otero, US Under Secretary, Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights meets Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Secretary of Defence in February 2012. Photo courtesy Lanka Standard. The year 2009 was when the Western group of States at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) made a serious diplomatic blunder, by attempting to pass a resolution against Sri Lanka. The West missed the plot. This was just days after a bloody three decades long war had ended in Sri Lanka; just days after a group which was listed as a terrorist group in their own countries had been comprehensively defeated; at a time when they themselves had already begun a ‘War on Terror’; and soon after they were proven once again to be hypocritical defenders of human rights, given their convenient abstention from voting during the UNHRC Special Session on Israel. It was a serious diplomatic defeat for the West, a significant diplomatic victory for Sri Lanka and its allies. Rise of ‘Eastphalia’ In…

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GENEVA-II & FOUR-LEGGED FURNITURE

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Photo courtesy The Star The US resolution at the UN HRC in Geneva has deepened the schisms in Sri Lankan society. That resolution will have the same polarising function as did the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), in defining each political tendency in the popular mind for a while to come. The dominant elements of the centre-right Opposition, the UNP (apart from its ‘Reformists’, that is) opine that there is nothing wrong, or particularly anti-Sri Lankan, with a resolution that calls on the  state to implement its own LLRC recommendations. The TNA has, after a sporadic show of realism, finally taken the line of the Tamil Diaspora’s pro-Tiger lobby by calling on the member states of the UNHRC to support the resolution. For the most part, the cosmopolitan civil society commentators are cheering the resolution on. On the left, the JVP opposes the resolution but opposes the government still more, on economic issues and terms the government’s anti-resolution mobilisation, a tactic.  The…

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Why Sri Lanka must ‘win’ at UNHRC

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Image courtesy Vikalpa from rally held in Colombo on Monday, 27th February. Unclear what the poster means, but the general thrust of it seems to gel with Chaminda’s submission. The following is an excerpt from a statement recently made by Ambassador Eileen Chambarlain Donahoe JD PhD, top US diplomat to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC): The case of Sri Lanka is different and difficult. It is essentially dealing with large-scale civilian casualties, allegations of government involvement in large-scale civilian casualties during a civil war that took place over many years, but ended in 2009. It’s not an ongoing crisis. And for that reason, it’s slightly more challenging. In the circumstances of the world today the fact that it’s not a crisis makes it slightly more difficult. The comment was of particular interest to this writer, as it corresponded to what he noted in a short presentation made at a Sri Lanka-related conference at the Eidgenössische Techniche Hochscule (ETH) in…

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Five Precepts of Identifying a Sri Lankan Traitor

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Image courtesy Transparency International Recently an air of nervousness has insinuated itself in to the Sri Lankan psyche. Doubt and uneasiness seem to be seeping like moisture through invisible social capillaries, carrying a message of treachery.  Evident is an alien concern; being branded foully on this island, which suddenly seems to have become a wellspring of traitors! Since this strange, new phenomenon of escalating treachery could hardly be attributed to ‘something in the water’, its fountainhead must be where that abhorrent label is encountered most frequently – in the rhetoric of the politicians! Amongst the populace, there seems to be great confusion as to what defines a ‘traitor’ in todays’ Sri Lanka. As the term lies undefined, an air of uncertainty hovers darkly over Sri Lankans who are forthright, querying or even concerned about the future of their nation and her people. Speak out and question, and from some corner emanates an uncertain hiss of,  ‘Is that a Traitor…?’. To…

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JAYATISSA, JEYARAJ AND JACOBINISM: DEBATING ‘SRI LANKAN-NESS’ IN POST-WAR SRI LANKA

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Photo courtesy Sri Lanka Guardian Much is being written nowadays about post-war Sri Lankan identity and the challenges of unity in diversity, among which are well-meaning interventions extolling the virtues of building a modernist, inclusive Sri Lankan nation that transcends narrow, parochial ethno-cultural identities. Given the fact that we completely and calamitously muffed the first opportunity to do so at the postcolonial historical moment, and fought a thirty-year ethnic conflict as a result, it ought to be strange that we should once again be resorting to this grand idea with such alacrity. That it is trotted out so uncritically and so often by patently well-intentioned, politically moderate and open-minded people – from the authors of the LLRC report to many political commentators and citizen journalists – demonstrates not only the pervasiveness of this idea in our political imagination but also the limits of that imagination. One such intervention is the recent article by Kamaya Jayatissa, in which a fervent argument…

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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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