Ethnic Conflict & the Debt Economy by Nalika Gajaweera, Jamhoor, South Asia, May 4, 2022 Reimagining a pluralist Sri Lanka in the wake of the ‘Gota Go Home’ movement “Except for the home crowd cheering for our national team at an international cricket match, it was the first time I was seeing Sri Lankans united together… Read more »
Monthly Archives: July 2022
Run for Life by a Phony Sinhalese Hero
Gotabhabya Rajapaksa by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 16, 2022 On April 19, 1951, Gen Douglas MacArthur announced to Americans ‘Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.’ But for a phony Sinhalese soldier, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, this was NOT true at all. Gota ran for his life, fearing death, not once – but twice, from the… Read more »
ITJP: Criminal Complaint against Sri Lankan ex-President in Singapore
by International Truth & Justice Project Sri Lanka, South Africa, July 24, 2022 ITJP Press-release-final-24-July-2022 Johannesburg: Lawyers from the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) have submitted a criminal complaint to the Attorney General of Singapore requesting the immediate arrest of former Sri Lankan President, Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa, for war crimes. The 63-page complaint argues… Read more »
Diaspora Groups Call for Singapore to Investigate ex-President
by People for Equity & Relief in Lanka, July 26, 2022 20220726 Joint Press_Release_Request_to_Investigate_Gotabaya_Rajapaksa Press Release: Global Coalition of Tamil and Human Rights Groups Urge Singapore’s Attorney General to Investigate Gotabaya Rajapaksa Washington D.C.; July 26, 2022 — Seventeen Tamil and human rights organizations from around the world issued a joint letter today, urging Singapore’s… Read more »
Request to Singapore to Investigate Gotabaya
by 17 NGOs, July 26, 2022 Request-to-Investigate-Gotabaya-July-26-2022_FINAL-1-1 People for Equality and Relief in Lanka Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research Australian Centre for International Justice Center for Justice and Accountability Centre de Protections des Droits du Peuple Tamoul Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America Global Rights Compliance Human Rights Watch International Commission of Jurists International… Read more »
The Black Week That Impacted Sri Lanka Forever
July 1983 Pogrom by Lionel Bopage, Groundviews, Colombo, July 24, 2022 The political leadership of Sri Lanka has yet again demonstrated that even in the midst of the worst socio economic and political crisis the country has faced since independence, they do not wish to follow a path of honesty and fairness to end the… Read more »
Sri Lanka’s Former President Must be Investigated for War Crimes
by Meenaksha Ganguly, Washington Post, July 22, 2022 (also available at Sri Lanka’s former president must be investigated for war crimes | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org) COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — There was satisfaction, and even glee, among many Sri Lankans when Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the widely unpopular president, fled the country by military jet in the dead… Read more »
JR Jayewardene, the Kanatte Mass Funeral and the July 1983 Anti-Tamil Pogrom
by D.B.S.Jeyaraj on his blog, July 22, 2022 (This article was published last year and is being re-posted without any changes to denote the 39th anniversary of “Black July”) July 24th 1983 was the day on which a destructive spree of anti-Tamil violence commenced in Jaffna in the early hours of the morning and began… Read more »
Black July: The Unspoken and the Unspeakable
by Ambika Satkunanathan, Groundviews, Colombo, July 29, 2020 Photo courtesy of Sangam July. Referred to as Black July to mark the pogrom against Tamils in 1983 carried out by Sinhala mobs. Pogrom is a Russian word meaning ‘to wreak havoc, to demolish violently’, that has come to mean organized, state sanctioned violence that targets a certain… Read more »
Racial Discrimination a Bane to Progress
by Dishan Joseph, Daily News, Colombo, July 22, 2022 “It is not our differences that divide us, but our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences” – American poet Audre Lorde Our beautiful Motherland Sri Lanka is a nation embellished with centuries of recorded history. When we delve into this history we can see… Read more »
Why a Feudal Culture & Absence of Meritocracy Bankrupted a Nation
by Charles Seevali Abeysekera, UN InterPress Service, July 19, 2022 BROMLEY, UK, Jul 19 (IPS) – Sri Lanka is officially bankrupt and a failed state in all but name. How did a country of 22 million people with a level of literacy on par with most of the developed world end up in such a… Read more »
Sri Lanka’s Crisis is Not Just About the Economy
But a long history of discrimination against minority groups by Niro Kandasamy, The Conversation, Australia, July 14, 2022 Sri Lanka is in the grip of an economic, political and humanitarian crisis. In a remarkable display of anger on Saturday, thousands of protesters disregarded government curfews, rampant military and police presence to storm the presidential palace… Read more »
Joint Tamil Civil Society Statement
Sri Lanka’s Political and Economic Crisis Joint-Tamil-Civil-Society-Statement-Sri-Lankas-Political-and-Economic-Crisis-14-July-2022 – Washington D.C.: July 14th 2022 – On July 13, 2022, Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled Sri Lanka leaving the island in political chaos. Many among the island’s Sinhala majority and the international community have heralded this moment, a culmination of months of protest, as a potentially revolutionary moment. And indeed, the… Read more »
MGR Remembered – Part 67
Espousing and Exhibiting Religiosity by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 9, 2022 Fellow MGR biographer R. Kannan’s comments, on Part 66, received on May 16th , was as follows: “Again a very interesting take on MGR’s autobiography meticulously listing those whom he had called friends and those he addressed as siblings and the few adversaries he… Read more »
Amnesty: Authorities Must Refrain from Use of Military to Police Protests
by Amnesty International, London, July 14, 2022 “The recent escalation of the authorities’ response to protests by calling in the armed forces, firing at protestors and excessive use of tear gas which resulted in the death of one person yesterday is deeply worrying,” said Yamini Mishra, Amnesty International’s South Asia Regional Director. The Sri Lankan… Read more »
Sri Lanka’s Road to Ruin Was Political, Not Economic
The proximate cause for the protests is inflation, but the roots are in Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism. By Neil de Votta, Foreign Policy, Washington, DC, July 12, 2022 On Saturday, Sri Lanka’s horrific saga took a consequential turn when protesters stormed and occupied the presidential offices and both the president’s and prime minister’s official residences. Global media are… Read more »
A Revolutionary Moment?
Tamil Guardian editorial, London, July 10, 2022 On July 9, thousands of protestors stormed the residence of Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in what appeared to be the climax of months of protest over the economic crisis on the island. Photos and videos that quickly made headlines around the world showed demonstrators rummaging through his wardrobe, working… Read more »
Lavish Projects and Meager Lives
The Two Faces of a Ruined Sri Lanka by By Mujib Mashal and Skandha Gunasekara, The New York Times, May 29, 2022 A frenzy of building on borrowed money in the Rajapaksa family’s home district illustrates the hubris and mismanagement that led the country into economic collapse. HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — The international airport, built a decade ago… Read more »
Cycles of Violence in Sri Lanka
A Crisis of Accountability by Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace & Justice, London, July 12, 2022 Sri Lanka’s Accountability Crisis: Part 2 of 3 This is the second of a 3-part series of essays and reports which the Sri Lanka Campaign will be publishing in the coming weeks, ahead of the Office of the High… Read more »
Scum of Asia?
by Nillanthan Maha in his blog, July 2, 2022 [translated from the original Tamil with Google Translate plus edits] Gotabaya did not go home. But a situation is developing where the people who fought to ask him to go home are paralyzed inside their homes. The country is moving towards a state of near social… Read more »