Archive for the ‘Politics and Governance’

Wishes for a peaceful and a happy New Year from the President

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I probably was one among millions of people in Sri Lanka privileged to receive a SMS from the President, wishing me “a peaceful and a happy New Year”. (A large majority who do not own a cell phone would receive no such wishes from the highest in the land). While many might argue this to be another gimmick of the President to gain popularity at the expense of the exchequer, I was prepared to grant His Excellency, these minor indulgences, since it causes little harm to anyone, and may even give an ego boost to some, to receive a direct wish from the President himself. However I thought if the President had taken the liberty to wish me out of the goodness of his heart, then I felt obliged to return his wishes. I therefore typed a message to the President, and tried sending it using the “Reply” option, only to receive a automated response stating “invalid contact details: President”….

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LLRC Recommendations: Can the Rajapaksa Regime Digest?

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Photo credit Ada Derana Finally, the full report of the long awaited Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) is in public domain, after it was presented in parliament on Friday (16 December, 2011) by the Leader of the House, Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva. He in fact sounded very certain the recommendations would be carried out to the letter. The report and its recommendations would not satisfy the Tamil Diaspora. There is no mention of war crimes, crimes against humanity and there is no mention of a need to investigate such crimes. The Sinhala Diaspora and the Sinhala racists here would not want  it either, for the report and its recommendations accept Tamil grievances and seeks political answers for them. For the moderates, though the Rajapaksa regime dropped their claim for “zero civilian casualties” and later accepted their could be “rogue” elements and a few who could not bear the pressures of the war, who committed excesses, the report and…

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The Prime Minister’s call will exacerbate Horizontal Inequality in Sri Lanka

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The statement by the Prime Minister that wheat flour imports should be banned is an irresponsible statement and must be retracted.  While it may be his choice to consume only rice, or he wishes more people in this country ate rice, he must be made aware that some people in Sri Lanka are totally dependent on wheat flour. The Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) for 2006 found that an average Tamil family in the estate sector consumed 17.4 Kg of wheat flour per month when the cost per Kg was less than Rs 40.  At the time the national monthly average was 2.4 Kg per household.  Even though price of wheat flour more than doubled since then to close to Rs 85 a Kg currently (the increase was much higher relative to rice), the HIES for the year 2010 found that estate Tamil households consumption fell only marginally to 15.4 Kg per month indicating how price inelastic these household…

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Peace, Military and People: Are non-military engagements of the military valid?

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Sri Lankan Army selling vegetables. Photo: Ministry of Defence – Sri Lanka War or internal armed conflict in the North and East was over; Emergency is no more; but still the military is everywhere. The military is now engaged in peacetime police-work, whale watching, selling vegetables, agriculture,  cleaning, constructions and many other non-military activities. Yet why isn’t there sufficient public debate on this? In this article I endeavor to briefly analyze some of the issues that need attention in the public interest. Engaging the military for non-military duties is regulated under the law. For example s.23 of the Army Act authorizes the President to order all or any of the member of the Regular Forces to perform certain non-military duties, provided the President is satisfied that there is an immediate threat of action to deprive the people of Sri Lanka of essentials of life by interfering with the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel or light or with means of…

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National Reconciliation, Transitional Justice, Rights and Accountability in Sri Lanka

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Image credit Steve Chao, via Al Jazeera Good Afternoon; Esteemed and Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen; Dear friends Thank you for inviting me to share with you my thoughts on reconciliation. I will not devote much time here, to describe the history of the conflict or the background situation in Sri Lanka. The physical and emotional pain that has been handed down through generations in Sri Lanka during the last five decades has mainly been the inevitable outcomes of past policies followed by the successive governments, based on discrimination and social exclusion. The players, particularly parties to the conflict, have continued their unceasing confrontational politics. The current landscape in Sri Lanka and within the diaspora bears testimony to this situation. On-going effects of dispossession, destruction, dispersal and subjugation mean that the affected people have become the most disadvantaged in society. Indications are that the gap between the affluent and the poor continues to widen. The island’s leadership seems neither committed…

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Human Rights in Sri Lanka: Impunity against Accountability and Justice

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Image credit AP, via BBC News “There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth…not going all the way, and not starting.” – Lord Buddha Authors note: When I was a teenager, I heard from a Sinhala brother that he constantly felt guilty for being unable to protect nearly 70 000-80 000 Sinhala youth who were killed in 1971 and 1989 by their own government in the name of ‘countering  insurgency’. Now, approaching my tenth year of engagement in journalism and human rights activism, I am experiencing a similar feeling. When thousands of Tamil civilians were massacred under the banner of ‘defeating terrorism’, I – along with like-minded others –could not cease or control the causalities.  Since then, it has been my sole intent to do something constructive and seek justice for those who were victimized by the state system in Sri Lanka. (An edited version of an article by Nirmanusan Balasundaram as first published in the UNESCO Chair & Institute of Comparative Human Rights…

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Osama, Prabhakaran and Me

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Photo from The Atlantic I have a bone to pick with these two. In fact maybe an entire rib cage. One of them caused me to question my nationalism and my identity as a Sri-Lankan and the other caused me to have to answer countless questions about my religious beliefs. In essence all my adult life, my religion and my country have been under attack; and yet how did I turn out to be such a pacifist? Shouldn’t I theoretically have bombs in my make-up case and hidden amongst my Manolo’s? Considering the chaos that these men have caused in their bid to achieve their agenda’s I should be a roving lunatic with a thirst for vengeance. As noble as their intentions may have been to their followers, they did harm their own and others in the process, to no significant outcome. In my opinion that is. Firstly let us start close to home. I was brought up in the…

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Heroes and Heroism: Osama Bin Laden and Prabhakaran

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Photo: AP Osama Bin Laden. Dark avenging hero, Arabian knight, Arabic Lawrence of Arabia. Osama versus the USA: David versus Goliath, a hijacked airliner the stone from his slingshot. Not quite. David didn’t murder Goliath’s family in their tents, leaving Goliath only hobbling. Not every leader or dramatic figure is a hero, and not every force that takes on a much bigger foe is heroic. Not even when that foe has been guilty, as has the USA, of horrible crimes such as the sanctions which were responsible for the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqi infants. This is not an argument for pacifism. Or moderation. Heroes are almost always extremists in one way or the other. They seem to seek out or get drawn into ‘extreme situations’ – in which they really come alive. They also ‘take it to the limit/one more time’. (The Eagles). They are not ‘one of ‘and do not comfortably ‘dwell among’. They are different from…

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Giving the middle finger: Sri Lanka’s conflicting responses to war crimes allegations

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Mr. A Nawan, Deputy Solicitor General of Sri Lanka This symbolic screen grab is from a short video on Channel 4′s website, on the occasion of screening in Geneva a one-hour documentary into the denouement of the war in Sri Lanka. As Channel 4′s website notes, “Disturbing footage in the film includes the apparent extra-judicial massacre of prisoners by government forces, the aftermath of targeted shelling of civilian hospitals and the bodies of female Tamil fighters who appear to have been sexually assaulted. Also examined in the film are atrocities carried out by the Tamil Tigers, including the use of human shields, and footage depicting the aftermath of a suicide bombing in a government centre for the displaced.” The Deputy Solicitor General of Sri Lanka notes in response to the screening of the documentary, “We have already made a preliminary investigation on the video and we have scientific material established that this particular video is not authentic.” Clearly he knows…

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How Sri Lanka Defeated Terrorism, Defence Seminar: Observations from a participant

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From the 31st of April to the 2nd of May I attended the Defense Seminar organized by the Sri Lankan Army. I wish to draw on what I saw as some of the positive and negative points of the conference. I will also comment on some of the many ‘highlights’ that occurred during the conference and perhaps give a different narrative of these from the ones I have read so far. What can be said from the outset is not the fact that the seminar was not the resounding success that it was portrayed by some parties, nor was it a dismal failure. The seminar was a mixed bag. While the seminar was framed as the “Sri Lankan Experience” in defeating terrorism, it mainly presented the view of the Army’s experience on defeating terrorism. I sincerely believe that the army played a pivotal role in combating terrorism, and that without the drive, courage, and execution of the strategic plan set…

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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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The killing of Osama Bin Laden

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Photo from The Atlantic I consider my self a political moderate. I value world peace, equity and justice. I sympathize with the USA on the calamity of 9/11. I abhor terrorism. However, I am also acutely aware of US imperialism which is globally pervasive in order to further US national interests. Fossil fuel is the most valuable and scarce natural resource essential to advance economic and political power. For centuries, the US and its western allies have commanded everything within their power to exploit it both covertly and overtly. It is no co-incidence that both Iraq and Libya, targets of the west, happen to produce the most superior fossil fuel in the world. Africa and Asia has also been subject to centuries of exploitation due to their abundant and valuable natural resources resulting in prosperity of the West at the expense of debilitating and chronic poverty of the exploited nations. Whether one likes it or not, Bin Laden was undoubtedly,…

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Maghreb: Mythicising Model, Misapplying Mode

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Photo courtesy Vikalpa The conversation I had on Lankan trajectories and ‘declinist’ discourses in a Paris cafe on a Sunday with my friend and former colleague, Prof. Nira Wickramasingha, now holding the Chair of South Asian History at the University of Leiden, reminded me of a point she had made sharply in her slender book ‘History Writing’. Sri Lanka, she had remarked, was one of the few countries in which mainstream newspapers carried pieces on history by those without any credentials or formal training in the disciplines of history and historiography. This, she wrote, would never happen in India for instance, where any incursion into history in the quality press would have to be backed up with credentials in order to secure publication. What she said of history is just as true of politics. Sri Lankan newspapers and websites are replete with pieces that go beyond intellectually legitimate critical commentary to the pontifically prescriptive and hortatory — almost in inverse…

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Moving Tamil Dissent Politics Beyond Anti-LTTEism

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To be able to engage in dissent politics one needs enormous courage. Not only in terms of the threats and dangers that come your way as a result of your decision to dissent (I remember Kethesh Loganathan once mentioning that when you dissent you risk bullets from multiple sides unlike when you take sides, when you have some cover) , but also whether you are convinced whether you are doing the right thing.  Particularly, when you are faced with a situation where as a result of the dialectics of power, one power (which I shall call the ‘initial source of power’) has led to the creation of another as a natural corollary. As a member of a political community subjected to immense oppression by the ‘initial source of power’ I have found it immensely difficult to decide how to respond to the power that was created as an anti thesis – as a response, in opposition and in resistance to…

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Interview with Kanak Mani Dixit

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Kanak Mani Dixit is editor of Himal Southasian regional magazine and publisher of the Nepali-language Himal Khabarpatrika newsmagazine. He was actively involved in resisting King Gyanendra’s takeover and was detained many times by the Police. Kanak’s career spans the United Nations as well as media, and he is also an author of a number of children’s books. Though extremely humble, Kanak is one of South Asia’s best known journalists. He is also the Chair of the Film South Asia documentary film festival, among the best known film festivals in South Asia. I first met Kanak around seven or eight years ago in Kathmandu, at a time when media from Sri Lanka and media from Nepal had several exchange programmes. Kanak stood out as one of the most progressive voices in the country, and in later years, one its most fearless, participating in the peoples movement against a monarchy that violently clamped down on dissent. Writing in 2006 Kanak averred, Thanks…

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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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