Ripe time for Tamil voters by Kumarathasan Rasingam, Secretary, Tamil Canadian Elders for Human Rights Org., February 18, 2020 It is election year for Sri Lanka. A general election has to be held before August 5th 2020 for a new Government to rule the polarized and divided country of majority Sinhalese and minorities with Tamils… Read more »
Monthly Archives: February 2020
AI: Fulfil the Demands of the Families of the Disappeared
by Amnesty International, February 14, 2020 In Sri Lanka, many families of the forcibly disappeared mark 14 February as ‘Missing Lovers Day’ in remembrance of their loved ones and to demand truth and justice The Sri Lankan government must deliver justice, truth and reparation to the families of the forcibly disappeared, Amnesty International said today,… Read more »
More Skeletal Remains Discovered in Sri Lanka’s Former War Zone
by Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, Europe, February 12, 2020 A judge has ordered methodical excavations of a site in Sri Lanka’s former war zone after construction workers discovered skeletal remains considered as belonging to humans. The bones were unearthed from the Mankulam hospital site in the Mullaitivu district when land clearance was done… Read more »
From Sachi’s Files – Chapter 13
An American Doctor’s view of colonial Ceylon in 1905 by Sachi Sri Kantha, February 16, 2020 In Chapter 10 of this series [https://sangam.org/from-sachis-files-chapter-10/] I provided the impression of an American nurse Ms. Annette Beals, in 1939. She reported about the medical conditions in Jaffna. In this chapter, I provide impression of an American doctor Nicholas… Read more »
PEARL welcomes US sanctions against Sri Lankan army chief
by People for Equality and Relief in Lanka, Washington, D.C., February 14, 2020 Today, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo banned Sri Lanka’s army chief Shavendra Silva from entering the US due to “credible information of his involvement, through command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings, by the 58th Division of… Read more »
U.S. Bars Sri Lankan Army Chief Accused of War Crimes
The sanctions are the first international action against Sri Lanka stemming from its brutal civil war. Several members of the new government are also accused of wartime abuses. by Maria Abi-Habib and Dharisha Bastians, The New York Times, February 15, 2020 NEW DELHI — The United States has imposed an entry bar on Sri Lanka’s army chief,… Read more »
Public Designation, Due to Gross Violations of Human Rights, of Shavendra Silva
of Sri Lanka Under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act by Michael R. Pompeo, US Secretary of State, Washington, DC, February 14, 2020 Press Statement https://www.state.gov/public-designation-due-to-gross-violations-of-human-rights-of-shavendra-silva-of-sri-lanka-under-section-7031c-of-the-department-of-state-foreign-operations-and-related-programs-appropriations-a/ The Department of State has designated Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva, current Commander of the Sri Lanka Army and Acting Chief of… Read more »
High Time UNHRC acts Decisively and Effectively on Sri Lanka
by Thambu Kanagasabai LLM [Lond.] Former Lecturer in Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, February 8, 2020 In the UN Human Rights Council’s March 2020 Sessions, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights will be presenting an update on Sri Lanka’s progress on Sri Lanka’s progress in implementing its 30-01-2015 Resolution which had more than… Read more »
TG Review: ‘Keenie Meenie -The British Mercenaries Who Got Away with War Crimes’
by Tamil Guardian, London, February 8, 2020 Photograph courtesy of Journalists for Democracy Sri Lanka (JDS) This month saw the release of an explosive new book that documents how a private British company formed of former Special Air Service (SAS) veterans turned mercenaries, went on to effectively set up one of Sri Lanka’s most notorious… Read more »
Erasing Tamil Eelam: De/Re Territorialisation in the Global War on Terror
by Ajay Parasram, pre-peer reviewed draft published in ‘Geopolitics,’ 17/4, 2012 Erasing_Tamil_Eelam_De_Re_Territorialisa This paper considers the Sri Lanka/Tamil Eelam conflict with attention to how its dramatic end can be explained through postcolonial territorial politics. I argue discourses of postcolonial nationalism and global terrorism aligned along domestic, regional, and international political levels to enable a military… Read more »
‘Madras Then, Chennai Now’
A journey through the city’s changing fortunes. http://www.nandithakrishna.in/images/360_Degree_view_of_Changing_City.pdf Review by Timeri N Murari, India Today, April 9, 2014 Madras/Chennai sneaks up on you when least expected. A city long ignored on the tourist routes suddenly materialises in The New York Times’ top destinations at number 26. Who would have imagined that? Two citizens, Nanditha Krishna… Read more »
New Meanings for Ravana
The focus of the fourth paper, ‘Ravana’s Sri Lanka: Redefining the Sinhala Nation?’, by Dileepa Witharana, focuses on the recent widespread surge of interest in Ravana within the Sinhala community. This interest has reached unprecedented levels, to the point of redefining the Sinhala nation in popular public space by discarding the theory of Aryan descent… Read more »
The Ritualizing of the Martial and Benevolent Side of Ravana
in Two Annual Rituals at the Sri Devram Maha Viharaya in Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka by Deborah de Koning, MDPI Religions, Netherlands, 21 August 2018 https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/250 Reflections …That the Ravana myth should not be considered a version of the Ramayana becomes for instance clear in the wall paintings of the Ravana mandiraya: These wall paintings concentrate… Read more »
“Tamil Female Civil Space – Its Evolution and Decline in Tamil Eelam”
Three Reviews by Female LTTE ex-Members (translated from Tamil) by N. Malathy, Aakar Books, New Delhi, July 2019 ISBN : 9789350026229, Available from all major online book sellers. Sudaraval This book records the changes that evolved in the Eelam Tamil Female society and the context in which it took place during a specific period…. Read more »
Little Jaffna in Paris
by Tatiana Medvedeva, Leiden University, May 2013 Abstract World’s cultural centre, Paris has been a transnational global village since centuries. In recent two decades, a new space of confrontation of global and local appeared on the capital’s landscape. The so‐called “quartier indien ” also known as “Little Jaffna”, situated in between the Gare du Nord… Read more »
The LTTE and the 2002-2006 Peace Process in Sri Lanka
The Politics of Transformation by Suthaharan Nadarajah & Luxshi Vimalarajah, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Switzerland, 2008 The_Politics_of_Transformation_the_LTTE Introduction The conflict in Sri Lanka is one of the world’s most protracted and multi-faceted. It has been aptly described as a conflict “where economic, political and cultural deprivation and grievances of a minority have… Read more »
Remembering Chidambaram S. Jayaraman (1917-1995)
by Sachi Sri Kantha, January 31, 2020 In Tamilnadu, there have been three renowned musicians with the name Jayaraman. D.K. Jayaraman (1928-1991), singer and the younger brother of Carnatic music diva D.K. Pattammal, Lalgudi Jayaraman (1930-2013), one of the leading Carnatic music violinist, and Chidambaram Sundaram Jayaraman (1917-1995) – chronologically the senior among the three…. Read more »
Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away with War Crimes
Book Review by Joe Glenton, ForcesWatch.net, January 29, 2020 That Britain outsources aspects of her habitually violent foreign policy is no revelation. The wars in Afghanistan and Libya, but perhaps most especially Iraq, saw a veritable mercenary gold rush as the unregulated hard men of disaster capitalism, mostly ex-soldiers, flooded into the lawless zones created… Read more »
From SAS to Merciless Mercenaries
A new book tells the story of an elite band of ex-special forces who wreaked havoc around the world. Their calling card? A live grenade in a wine glass by Neil Tweedie, Daily Mail, UK, February 1, 2020 Private military company KMS operated behind the scenes in the 1970s and 80s It did jobs that would… Read more »