Archive for the ‘Reconciliation’

The End of War in Sri Lanka: Reflections and Challenges released as iBook

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From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka. Over this week alone, the site received over forty-thousand readers and exclusively featured over eighty-thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty-thousand words of commentary. By popular request, The End of War in Sri Lanka: Reflections and Challenges, a compilation of content that appeared online in PDF form, was first released in May 2010. In mid-2010, it was published in print form. Today, we are relaunching the book as a free iBook on Apple iTunes. It is available as a direct download in 32 countries and regions, and readable on both the iPad 1 and 2 using iBooks. Ironically, Apple’s Sri Lankan iTunes store does not list the book, but you can easily download it to your Mac or PC using this link (138Mb iBook). Once downloaded, importing it to iTunes and synchronising it with your iPad…

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Can GOSL Implement LLRC Recommendations?

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Photo credit Ada Derana This is the question of the day. This is raised nationally and internationally and answers contrast for different reasons. In this article, I endeavor to briefly answer this question from a governance perspective, keeping in mind the present socio-political realities  in Sri Lanka. The President appointed the Commission of Inquiry on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliations (LLRC) on 15th May 2010 with a broad mandate to inquire into and report on specific matters, in terms of the Commissions of Inquiry Act. The title of the Commission and the mandate in general suggests that the objective of the appointment of the LLRC is to find ways for reconciliation among all communities, after a bloody ethnic conflict.  It is also possible to argue that the LLRC was appointed to advise the Head of the State on how to avoid a national tragedy in the future. The Warrant has, among others the following term of reference: “[inquire and report on] Institutional,…

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Longing and Belonging series: Returning lives, rebuilding limbs

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Dr. Panagamuwa’s workshop was tucked away down a corridor of the Mannar Hospital in the north west of Sri Lanka. When I arrived, the doctor, dressed in his distinctive green theatre overalls, was rushing around making sure his patients were attended to. One of the patients was Mary, a young Tamil woman whose leg had been amputated following a landmine explosion. I watched Dr. Panagamuwa check over the adjustments he had made to her new artificial limb. He spoke to her in Tamil and when he got stuck with a word or phrase, his young assistant would step in to help communicate. “I didn’t think he was a doctor,” Mary told me afterwards. “He’s not like a normal doctor.” She was in a hurry to catch the last bus home, much easier now with her new leg. Together with both Tamil and Sinhalese doctors from England, Dr. Panagamuwa started the Meththa Foundation, a charity would focus on using his highly…

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Longing and Belonging series: The science of planning in Jaffna

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The throng of devotees and tourists visiting the Nallur festival had receded and life slowly returned to normal in Jaffna. I stayed behind to see if I could persuade others visiting from abroad to be a part of my Longing and Belonging series. I was especially interested in those that were engaging in a sustained manner, in contrast to the charming young family that I had met at the height of the festival. This however proved to be a challenge. I met many who were engaging with projects in the north, but who were uncomfortable with being open about their views, preferring instead to keep a low profile. One man who was willing to be involved was Dr Narendran, an associate professor who had worked for many years in Saudi Arabia, and who was now back in Sri Lanka, spending most of his time here. We talked over coffee at the famous Malayan cafe in the heart of Jaffna town…

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Longing and Belonging series: From London to Jaffna for the first time

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The Nallur festival was in full flow. Kavadi drummers played for the crowds of devotees that swelled around Jaffna’s famous temple. Dotted around me were visitors from abroad. It was wonderful to see they were back, tracing lost roots and reconnecting with family and friends. I wanted to meet them and to understand what it was like being back. One of these was a young Tamil family from London. For the two daughters, it was their first time in Sri Lanka, visiting what they called their mother’s “home country”. The family had been helping a local charity, the Hindu Board of Education, from afar and were in Jaffna to visit the orphanage and to take in the Nallur festival. The two girls had struggled all week with the heat, the mosquitoes and the crowds, but they didn’t complain. They took time to talk to the children in bits of Tamil that they had learned and handed out chocolates to them…

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Optics and politics of grief

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Photo courtesy asianews.it “I was on my motorcycle going through this area behind a couple on a motorcycle. The woman was pregnant and they were out probably to do some shopping. The couple was coming fast. They signalled to me and I moved aside to let them overtake. I suddenly saw the couple fall down for no discernible reason and the man writhing in agony. He had been hit by a bullet from the army’s side. I stopped and the pregnant woman pleaded with me to take her husband to the hospital. Most people passed us by engrossed in their own problems and such things had become a daily occurrence. The man whose lower jaw had been blown off was vomiting blood and the situation looked hopeless. What had happened was that when we passed that area on motorbikes, it was our custom to dip our heads as low as possible to minimise our chances of being hit by an army…

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Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts

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Editors note: Groundviews is very pleased to host the web premiere of Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts by Kannan Arunasalam. We’ve featured Kannan’s visually stunning and compelling work before in Koothu, kerosene and paper: portraits of resilience, part of the Moving Images series commissioned by Groundviews. Over the coming week we’ll progressively upload Kannan’s short videos, so check back often. Finally, if you have a good broadband connection, we highly recommend that in the trailer below, you turn on HD and view it full screen. Please see From London to Jaffna for the first time, The science of planning in Jaffna and Returning lives, rebuilding limbs. ### August in Sri Lanka is a month of religious festivals in the north and also a chance for the diaspora to return and reconnect with their homeland. What better time I thought than to try and meet members of the diaspora returning to visit Sri Lanka. My own journey started six years…

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Going beyond the 13th Amendment: Newspaper coverage of the Sri Lankan’s President’s assurance to India

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Our affiliate Vikalpa did a short media monitoring exercise anchored to the front page reportage of the Indian Foreign Minister’s official visit to Sri Lanka and the press conference in which the President’s commitment to going beyond the 13th Amendment was reiterated by him. The following is a translation of the report that first appeared on Vikalpa. In addition to the translation below, which deals with the Sinhala and Tamil media, it is interesting to note the differences in reporting the Indian FM’s statement regarding the 13th Amendment between the state-run Daily News and the privately owned Daily Mirror.  The Daily News does not have a single mention of the President’s avowed commitment to go beyond the 13th Amendment anywhere on the front page. The headline quoting the Indian FM, notes that the LLRC report is a basis for reconciliation. There is a photo showing the President, with both his hands, grasping the outstretched arm of the Indian FM. We…

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Examining Sri Lanka’s Diplomacy Machine

Lankan Human Rights Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe

Photo courtesy JDS As promised, the Sri Lankan government made the final report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) public last month. It has also recently released its “National Action Plan for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights: 2011-2016.” The Action Plan was developed in accordance with a commitment the government had made in 2008, the last time Sri Lanka participated in the UN’s Universal Periodic Review. Both documents are part of the Sri Lankan government’s strategy to placate international observers and convince people that there is no need for any kind of international assistance because the country’s domestic institutions are working just fine. Like the LLRC report, the National Action Plan contains some decent ideas and recommendations, but it is replete with missing and false information. For example, the section on the Prevention of Torture is laughable and worrisome. The Sri Lankan government claims that it “maintains a zero-tolerance policy on torture.” This sweeping assertion directly contradicts…

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Curated updates from Indian Foreign Minister’s official visit to Sri Lanka

Tweets from Syed Akbaruddin, Official Spokesperson, Ministry of External Affairs, India & other media reporting on Indian Foreign Minister’s official visit to Sri Lanka in January 2012. Note in particular the reference to the implementation of the 13th Amendment Plus by the Sri Lankan government. [View the story "Updates from Indian Foreign Minister's official visit to Sri Lanka" on Storify]

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Silva’s Report, Role of International Community and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka

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GV caption: Three terrorists, two terrorists, former terrorists, patriots or a hero? How one sees this image is  measure of how much Sri Lanka remains divided post-war. Image shows Secretary of Defense Gotabaya Rajapaksa speaking during the inaugural National Conference on Reconciliation in Colombo November 24 ,2011. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte, courtesy MSNBC. One of the most fundamental challenges of peacemaking and peacebuilding is confronting the past while building a just foundation for the future. Fighting impunity and pursuing peace are not incompatible objectives – they can work in tandem, even in an ongoing conflict situation.  – Ban Ki -moon, The Secretary General, UN [1] Background of Silva’s report Since the brutal war in Sri Lanka came to an end in May 2009 with the violation of International Human Rights Law and Humanitarian Law, the International community called for an International Independent Investigation [III] into war crimes and crimes against humanity. Due in part to this pressure, the UN Secretary General appointed a Panel…

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The Final Report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission: A Response

Sri Lankan Defence Ministry Secretary Go

Photo courtesy JDS The concluding report of Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was finally made public in mid-December, after multiple delays and an interim report that went mostly unnoticed. The Commission’s report has sparked considerable debate within an increasingly stifled public sphere, rejuvenating conversations in Sri Lanka about governance, human rights, and a permanent political settlement. Unfortunately, because the Report was only released publicly in English, a substantial number of Sri Lankans are excluded from these conversations. We also note that in a true democracy, a free press holds government to account: Sri Lanka needs—and clearly does not have—a strong fourth estate to track the Government’s implementation of LLRC recommendations. We welcome the Report’s contributions to political discourse, but even its most critical conclusions reveal its irredeemable limitations: like the many commissions of inquiry before it, it is neither a truly investigative body, nor empowered to hold political elites to account. Nevertheless, the Report, which contains the…

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Quo Vadis, the Conga Line?

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When Sri Lanka vied for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, there was a telling photograph taken at one of the bashes the regime threw in the Caribbean, the culminating event of a labour intensive, extravagant self-indulgent exercise. The photograph has Hon Namal Rajapaksha MP leading a conga line followed by the Governor of the Central Bank. They both seem…well, happy. However, though a good time was had by all no doubt, that conga line led nowhere. We did not win the bid to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games; agnostics and atheists alike were put on notice about the existence of the divine. The country was saved. Yet the conga line as both a metaphor and description of the structure of power and the ruling regime remains. Into 2012, where will it head? The old year 2011 like all others before was interesting in the sense of the Chinese curse. It saw the steady decline of governance and the Rule of Law,…

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Interview with Alison Skilbeck: Are There More Of You?

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Alison Skilbeck will perform her critically acclaimed production Are There More Of You? in Colombo on the 13th and 14th of January at the British Council auditorium. Groundviews caught up with Alison to talk about her play and theatre in general. As noted on the Oxford Playhouse website, Alison Skilbeck was a member of Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) and played lead roles at the Playhouse in many OUDS productions including King Lear, Epicene, The Plough and the Stars, Dandy Dick, and A Winter’s Tale, and toured to the Edinburgh Fringe in Oxford revue. Skilbeck’s enormously varied stage career has taken her to the West End and all over the UK, and on tour to the USA and Europe: early on she created roles in no fewer than six Alan Ayckbourn premieres at Scarborough. On radio she was ‘Polly Perks’ in the Archers until the character’s tragic death; while television credits include Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, The Beiderbecke Affair, Dr…

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Ending the Exile and Back to Roots: Fears, Challenges and Hopes

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[Editors note: The author was married to Dr. Rajini Thiranagama (née Rajasingham), a Tamil human rights activist and feminist murdered in 1989 by the LTTE. She was one of the founding members of the University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna, which during the war, published some of the most hard hitting critiques and exposes of Government as well as LTTE atrocities and human rights violations. Since 2009, Dayapala Thiranagama's insightful articles to Groundviews have been amongst the site's most read and shared.] ### “Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means” (Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, London, 1940, Page 81). On 27  December 1989 I arrived in Heathrow along with my two young daughters, aged 9 and 11 years. At  the Immigration Desk the  Officer asked me how long we intended  to stay.I replied ‘a couple of weeks’. My…

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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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