Archive for the ‘Reconciliation’

Is the Tamil Diaspora Against Unity in Sri Lanka?

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“The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes The Tamil Diaspora is a diverse ethnic group. Amongst it, the majority are strongly connected to their kith and kin in the island of Sri Lanka. Arguably, the Tamil Diaspora is also a very powerful body. It reflects the aspirations and the grievances of the Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka who continue to live under severe suppression, in an open prison. Considering the Sri Lankan state’s oppression of the Tamil people on the ground, the interaction between them and the Tamil Diaspora, though invisible, is very efficient and effective. Since May 2009’s Tamil genocide, the role of the Tamil Diaspora has reshaped to rebuild the lives, and social, economic, cultural and political structures of their beloved ones. This is no easy task, given a powerful section of the Tamil Diaspora chooses not to…

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Archiving ‘Her Stories’: In conversation with Radhika Hettiarachchi

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Her Stories, a unique archive of oral history, was conceived of and curated by Radhika Hettiarachchi. We begin by Radhika going in to what the archive is, and how it came about. Featuring 240 stories of mothers, the archive’s website avers, These histories or ‘Herstories’ showcase a shared history and highlight how we Sri Lankans are rooted in multiple identities, multiple histories, and different experiences. Through the narratives of many, this project also highlights a sense of fundamental humanness that transcend boundaries. These ‘Herstories’ will not only add to the culture of oral tradition and story telling in Sri Lanka, they will contribute to bringing diverse groups together through the lives of others. Radhika notes that the age of the subjects in the archive ranged from those in their early 20′s to those around 65. In the interview Radhika reasserts the importance of looking at women’s voices which are often lost or marginal to history as recorded by men. She…

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Of Foreign Policy Failures, Geneva Resolutions, Double Standards and other excuses for Non-Reconciliation in Sri Lanka

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Photograph of, by some accounts, the Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka.  Reminiscences of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy triumphs spearheaded by the late lamented Lakshman Kadirgamar are fresh in my  mind given that it was only the other day (12 April) that we marked what might have been  his 81st birth anniversary with a tribute to the former Foreign Minister. It is, therefore, doubly sad to reflect on the fact that Sri Lanka’s relations with the world outside our shores are in tatters at present. To say that our foreign policy today lacks coherence,  direction  and depth is to be generous. Had Lakshman Kadirgamar been our Foreign Minister at the time, the  short-sighted  ‘victory resolution’ introduced by Sri Lanka at the UNHRC in Geneva in 2009 would not have seen the light of day. His sagacity would have enabled Sri Lanka to avoid the pitfall of playing into the hands of our opponents, a sagacity that characterised our professional diplomacy even…

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Responding to Geneva by Exemplary Restitution

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Robert O. Blake has once said, “International mechanisms can become appropriate in cases where states are either unable or unwilling to meet their obligations.” After Geneva March 2013, US officials have reiterated this in stricter terms. TNA MP Suresh Premachandran has said the final Geneva Resolution will not relieve the affected Tamils and reminded the UNHRC wish (2012) to implement the LLRC recommendations, which allegedly has been defaulted. TNA Leader R Sampanthan has said that if Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) complied by implementing the LLRC recommendations, a second resolution could have been avoided. However, Japan’s Yasushi Akashi has made a favourable statement for Sri Lanka, quoting his visits to North Sri Lanka and how “the whole country coped with the challenges” In Geneva Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe described positive developments.  Later, Minister Wimal Weerawansa exhorted that Sri Lanka is unshaken by Geneva resolutions, while Minister DEW Gunasekara feared worse befalling by government defaulting. Is this confusion due to different viewer notions?…

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#unlk: Archive and visualisation of tweets on Sri Lanka at HRC’s 22nd Session

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The 22nd regular session of the Human Rights Council was held from 25 February to 22 March 2013 at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. As Groundviews did with conversations on Twitter over Sri Lanka during the UPR sessions last year, we archived every single tweet from Thursday, 21st February 2013 to Tuesday, 26th March 2013 with the #unlk hashtag. After tossing around several options for a good hashtag over email, #unlk was circulated globally by leading websites, activists, local and international HR organisations, journalists and others before the start of the HRC’s 22nd Session, to facilitate the creation of this archive. We used Martin Hawskey’s new TAGS v5 template with Twitter’s Developer API and Google Docs to archive every single #unlk tweet. There are 6056 tweets in the archive, which include retweets as well. The peaks correspond to the times and dates which either the #unlk hashtag was promoted globally as a means to capture conversations around sri Lanka…

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Interview with Nimalka Fernando: The UN HRC resolution and beyond

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Nimalka, now we’ve seen that the council voted for the resolution on Sri Lanka. What is your initial impression? It’s a serious voting pattern. Because if you look at the resolution, the resolution has very substantial  concerns raised by civil society for a period of time. From holding elections in the North, addressing issues of impunity, collapse of rule of law, the unaddressed issues of accountability, the failure of Sri Lankan Government to address issues of reconciliation for a long time, and also the selective manner in which the LLRC action plan has been constructed and also the inadequacies in the national human rights action plan. So if you take all those subjects one by one, if you look at the voting pattern one by one, I feel very serious in terms of the resolution. If you take for instance the statement made by Thailand; Thailand voted against the resolution. But Thailand made a very significant statement calling on to…

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UN HRC 22nd Session | Resolution ‘Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka’

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An archive of material around the Resolution titled ‘Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka’ passed at the UN Human Rights Council today. Final text below, and available as PDF here, and as Word document here. ### Human Rights Council Twenty-second session Agenda item 2 Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General Austria, Belgium*, Bulgaria*, Canada*, Croatia*, Denmark*, Estonia, Finland*, France*, Georgia*, Germany, Greece*, Hungary*, Iceland*, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein*, Lithuania*, Malta*, Monaco*, Montenegro, Norway*, Poland, Portugal*, Romania, Saint Kitts and Nevis*, Slovakia*, Slovenia*, Spain, Sweden*, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland*, United States of America: draft resolution 22/… Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka The Human Rights Council, Reaffirming the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, Guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights and other relevant instruments, Bearing in…

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The Numbers Never Lie: A Comprehensive Assessment of Sri Lanka’s LLRC Progress

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Download the report in full here, or view in inline here. ### Introduction Nearly four years since the end of the country’s civil war, Sri Lanka remains a divided, post-war society, as the ethnic conflict burns on. It has been fifteen months since the Final Report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was made public. In July 2012, the GoSL released an Action Plan to implement the LLRC recommendations, yet little progress has been made on this front. Instead, a host of problems related to the judiciary, governance and militarization, among other issues continue to plague the island nation. TSA’s third report, The Numbers Never Lie: A Comprehensive Assessment of Sri Lanka’s LLRC Progress, provides a detailed look at the Government of Sri Lanka’s LLRC progress that includes both quantitative and qualitative analysis. TSA surveyed 1,786 households across 208 GN divisions in nine districts throughout the North, East and Hill Country. In virtually all crucial areas, the GoSL…

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Police detains families of disappeared from Northern Sri Lanka and prevents peaceful protest and petition to the UN

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[Editors note: See our earlier report, Police impeding the movement of Tamils.] March 5th, 2013, Vavuniya On March 5th, 2013, at about 8.30pm, the Police blocked about 600 persons, comprising families of the disappeared and civil society activists from the North, from traveling from Vavuniya to Colombo to attend a protest organized by the ‘Association of the Families Searching for the Disappeared Relatives’ the following day (6th). Following the protest at Viharamaha Devi Park, in Colombo, the families had planned to march to the UN office in Colombo and hand over a petition. This protest was meant to be part of a larger campaign organized by the families of the disappeared to know the truth about their loved ones, and to lobby the international community to intervene on their behalf by calling on the Sri Lankan Government to provide them with truth, justice and accountability. As a result of this obstruction however, the planned protest could not be held. People had…

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Lies, Damn Lies and Mahinda Samarasinghe at the UN HRC

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Image courtesy JDS Sri Lanka Campaign has just released a very good compilation of rebuttals to points made by Min Mahinda Samarasinghe’s address to the UN Human Rights Council yesterday, which can be read and viewed here. Here Sri Lankan civil society responding to Mahinda Samarasinghe’s speech @groundviews @cfhaviland #HRC22 #UNlk scribd.com/fullscreen/127… — Sri Lanka Campaign (@SLcampaign) February 28, 2013 In addition to the content, the production of this document, and its publication online, is itself an interesting development which flags the growing influence of web and social media in countering the wily terminological inexactitudes of the Rajapakse regime and its leading apologists. Civil Society Collective by Repost This Article

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The Numbers Never Lie: A Quick Look at Sri Lanka’s LLRC Progress

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The administration of President Mahinda Rajapaksa won the ethnic war, but Sri Lanka’s protracted conflict is more alive than ever. There is a lot of talk about how the situation in the North and East has improved, but most of these assertions are misleading. The rebuilding of physical infrastructure alone is not a very helpful indicator when it comes to reconciliation. The dearth of psychosocial assistance being provided, the thousands of disappeared who remain missing and the continued erosion of the rule of law contradict the Government of Sri Lanka’s (GoSL) assertion that the country has made meaningful progress on the reconciliation front. At this point, national reconciliation is not just illusory; it is a fantasy and will be as long as the present regime maintains its antipathetic stance towards human rights, devolution and the implementation of the LLRC recommendations. As the 22nd session of the UN’s Human Rights Council (HRC) comes to the attention of both domestic and international…

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A Tale of Two Countries

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Image from Niti Central “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way….” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities Over the past year, one can be forgiven if one thought that in fact that there were two countries called Sri Lanka or at least two visions for a country called Sri Lanka.  Both have seemingly emerged out of the shadows of the end of the bloody 26 year old conflict when Sri Lanka faced a cross roads in terms of moving forward cleansed…

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“Building the base”: An interview with Sunila Abeysekara about post-war Sri Lanka

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Sunila, how do you look at Sri Lanka today?  There are different interpretations ranging from a constitutional dictatorship to clan- run ‘deep state’? And you have decades of human rights activism behind you; you have been to the Geneva Human Rights council for nearly a decade to campaign for rights in Sri Lanka, but today Geneva has become the “f word” in dominant political discourse in Sri Lanka? Why?  Indeed it is true to say that President Rajapaksa, his brothers and son and nephews, whatever you know, they constitute a block, a family block that actually controls the political and economic future of our country at this moment. So definitely it is not a democracy. Definitely what has happened in the past months have shown us that there is no rule of law and the constituent features of any democracy; the independence of judiciary, the freedom of the press, all these, do not exist in Sri Lanka. So, at least…

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A simple experiment to highlight ingrained racism in Sri Lanka

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When Etisalat dreams of a Sri Lanka where everyone is connected, it’s clearly thinking only of the Sinhalese. Why else would the company’s website feature, so prominently, a Lion to depict ‘everyone’ in Sri Lanka? In popular media, corporate marketing and government output, there are numerous other examples of a racism so deeply internalised and ingrained in Sri Lanka that even when flagged, it is dismissed as unimportant or at best, of marginal and passing interest. As we tweeted, @30streetstudio @etisalatsl It’s this that’s most worrying about #srilanka – ingrained racism, so normalised it is, to most, invisible. #lka — Groundviews (@groundviews) February 13, 2013   Another particularly revealing example from Government recently came in the form of the Police spokesperson’s comments over an ill-thought out and executed census of vehicular traffic coming into Colombo. As reported in Ceylon Today, the forms handed out to motorists in light vehicles were only in Sinhala, raising the ire of the Government’s own…

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Sri Lanka’s National Plan of Action vis-à-vis Reconciliation

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Image courtesy Centre for Human Rights “Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action” – Malcolm Fraser Once again Sri Lanka is in the thralls of yet another ethnic conundrum.  It would seem that Sri Lankans like to live dangerously, in the midst of controversy, conflict and violence.  Why else will we on the eve of the Human Rights Commission sessions coming up in March 2013 impeach our chief justice raising issues of the independence of the judiciary followed much too soon by sundry chauvinist organizations such as the Bodhi Bala Sena, Hela Sinhala Hiru mushrooming and being dialogued with at the highest political levels.  Even more disturbing is the police inaction in the face of communal agitation lending credence to theories of compliance at high political levels.  It is a tragedy that many of these organizations with offensive and objectionable agendas that create ethnic and…

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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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