CELEBRATING PRIDE IN SRI LANKA
11th June 2010 – 11th July 2010 marks PRIDE month in Sri Lanka. Historically stemming from the watershed Stonewall riots in 1969, which broke out when police raided a gay bar in…
Identity
Celebrating a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning Sri Lanka
Rosanna Flamer-Caldera is the Executive Director of Equal Ground. This interview was held soon after the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka said he was open to dialogue with the gay community, but…
my teacher talks of a sri lankan english-poem ii
my teacher talks of a sri lankan english-poem ii (a responsive thing) by sumathy ooo, how sad that thing called a sri lankan-thing who thinging this thing of of englees or inglisss…
The Taxi Driver’s Story: In the Name of a Father
My name is Polgahawela Aarachchige Junius Soloman Hickmana Thanthiriya Bandarawela, and I am a taxi driver in Colombo — you can call me Hick, for short. I am about to tell you…
Compilation of special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka
Download the 162 page compilation of content as a PDF in high quality (25.4Mb), or low quality (3.7Mb). The low quality version is good enough to read, but the photos will look and…
Superstitions in the 21st century: Of black pottu, politicians and punools
In the black and white photographs of my childhood, my sisters and I look pretty smart, standing to attention under the spreading mango tree which Rajaratnam Uncle took every year to record…
Ground realities in Jaffna and its environs: Two key perspectives
From the psycho-social trauma and destruction of the social fabric in Jaffna after close upon three decades of brutal war to the challenges of post-war development, entrepreneurship and economic revival, these two…
A Snooty English Speaker’s reply
[Editor’s note: The following article is a riposte to Malinda Seneviratne’s article, published in the Sunday Observer on the 23rd of May 2010.] One of the points I made in my article…
Sinhala nationalism, civil society organisations and the future
Nationalism in our post-modern era is an extremely suspect concept. It smacks of homogeneity, patriarchy and insularity; all ideas and concepts that our generation has learned with good reason to suspect. Most…
Eelam experiments: The transnational versus local realities
‘Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize.’[1] I was inspired by the above words of Chimamanda Adichie talking about…
Fighting Windmills? Diaspora and Militarism in Post-Conflict Lanka
“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is…
FROM NECESSARY WAR TO SUSTAINABLE PEACE IN SRI LANKA
Interestingly of the four best pieces I have read on the first anniversary of the war, . Within Sri Lanka and among Sri Lankans, the debate on the war may be differentiated…
Sithuvili: On war’s end and a year later…
Prelude: The following is a ‘fragmented reflection’, on present-day Sri Lanka, war’s end and related issues. The objective was to capture the thought process of a citizen ‘thinking’ about these issues as…
WINNING THE INVISIBLE CONFLICT: Is Sri Lanka headed for sustainable peace?
Background On Tuesday 19th May 2009 – the day after the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka,…
Vanni in the year after war: Tears of despair and fear
About six months after the end of the war, in November 2009, the government of Sri Lanka relaxed restrictions on travel to the Vanni[1] and started to allow some of the displaced…
