Completing Four Decades as a Movie Star by Sachi Sri Kantha, February 1, 2022 To the previous part 63, friend R. Kannan’s comments received on December 24th was as follows: “A very comprehensive account pulling together the various strands neatly. I haven’t seen Dungan’s interview and have also yet to lay my hands on his memoirs. Kudos…. Read more »
HRW: Sri Lanka’s Failure to Reform the Prevention of Terrorism Act
“In a legal black hole” by Human Rights Watch, New York, February 7, 2022 February 7, 2022 News Release Sri Lanka: Grave Abuses Under Discredited Law Summary Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) has been used for over 40 years to enable prolonged arbitrary detention, to extract false confessions through torture, and to target minority… Read more »
Trilingual Blunders
Signboards, Social Media, and Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Publics by Prof. Christina P. Davis, Signs & Society, Volume 8, Number 1, Winter 2020 ABSTRACT In Sri Lanka all public signs are required by law to be in Sinhala, Tamil, and English. This article investigates the multiple, clashing ways that Sri Lankan Tamil speakers (Tamils and… Read more »
Review: ‘The Red Tern’
by Zulma Publishers, France, Spring 2022 Originally in Tamil, translated into French as ‘La Sterne Rouge’ A major Sri Lankan voice Ala is born and raised in Sri Lanka, in a Tamil village prone to attacks from Sinhalese paramilitary groups. Exposed to inter-ethnic violence, she is still a child when she joins the Tamil Tigers…. Read more »
What Makes Amnesty’s Apartheid Report Different?
by Maureen Clare Murphy, The Electronic Intifada, February 3, 2022 What makes Amnesty International’s new report determining that Israel practices the crime of apartheid against Palestinians any different from those that came before it? Certainly, Israel’s “hysterical” reaction – (in the words of one Haaretz headline) – to the Amnesty study is notably different from its relatively understated response to similar… Read more »
Jailing Activists & Pardoning Murderers
Monitoring ten issues of concern in Sri Lanka in 2021 by Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace & Justice, February 2022 Read the full report as a PDF Monitoring issues of concern In March 2021, the UN Human Rights Council passed Resolution 46/1: Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka. The resolution identified ten… Read more »
Abolishing PTA is the Only Way Out
by Basil Fernando, Groundviews, February 2, 2022 The Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) (Amendment) Bill, a bill to amend the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act, No. 48 of 1979 (PTA), has been gazetted by the order of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The proposed amendment still leaves much that has been criticized as dangerous… Read more »
Book on Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Peace Efforts
in Sri Lanka to release on Feb 28 by Press Trust of India, February 2, 2022 New Delhi, Feb 2 (PTI) Revealing the untold story of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s peace efforts in Sri Lanka, a new book, “The Tiger’s Pause”, gives readers a sweeping view of the spiritual leader’s endeavours towards a ceasefire agreement in… Read more »
February 4 Black Day for Tamils in Sri Lanka
Independence Day for Sinhalese By: Kumarathasan Rasingam, Secretary, Tamil Canadian Elders for Human Rights, February 2, 2022 Postcolonial Sri Lanka has become worse than it was during the colonial period. The sad history of February 4th – the day of independence to the Sinhalese has turned out to be a BLACK DAY to the Tamils…. Read more »
From Temple to Battlefield
Bharata Natyam in Sri Lanka’s Civil War by Janet O’Shea, in ‘Choreographies of 21st Century Wars,’ edited by Gay Morris, Jens Richard Giersdorf, Oxford University Press, 2016 Three Images of Dance and Cultural Production in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora Early parts of the chapter are readable at https://books.google.com/books?id=54ZVCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT118&ots=Z8jFNbl3LZ&lr&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false Book Synopsis Wars… Read more »
UN Human Rights Chief Welcomes Sri Lanka Report
Urges further investigation into conduct of final stages of the war Pillay on Sri Lanka by UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, 26 April 2011 GENEVA (26 April 2011) — The High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Tuesday welcomed the public release of the report of the Secretary-General’s Panel… Read more »
Indian Ocean Strategic Studies Newsletter
by Indian Ocean Strategic Studies, New York, January 2022 Indian Ocean Strategic Studies newsletter January 2022 Mission of the IOSS Indian Ocean is at the heart of international geo-politics. Some 80% of the world’s maritime oil trade flows through three narrow passages of water, known as choke points, in the Indian Ocean. This includes the… Read more »
Providing Facilities to Tamils
President’s new panacea to solve their 72 years of ethnic problems by Thambu Kanagasabai, LLM [London] Former Lecturer in Law, University of Colombo. Sri Lanka, January 26, 2022 Sri Lankan President’s opening speech on January 18, 2022 detailing his commitments and acceptance of the current volatile situation is welcome on paper, but whether they would… Read more »
India Stays in the Game Facing a Pushy China
by Indrani Bagchi, Times of India, January 21, 2022 China will never “bully” its neighbours in the South China Sea, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi promised the Philippines this week. Instead, he preached: “Stressing only one side’s claims and imposing one’s own will on the other is not a proper way for neighbours to treat… Read more »
Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict
Practicing Bharata Natyam in Colombo, Sri Lanka by Ahalya Satkunaratnam, Wesleyan University Press, April 7, 2020 Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict is a groundbreaking ethnographic examination of dance practice in Colombo, Sri Lanka, during the civil war (1983–2009). It is the first book of scholarship on bharata natyam (a classical dance originating in India) in Sri Lanka,… Read more »
‘Sovereignty, Space and Civil War in Sri Lanka’
Porous Nation by Anoma Pieris Routledge, 2019 9781351246347 Analyses of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983–2009) overwhelmingly represent it as an ethnonationalist contest, prolonging postcolonial arguments on the creation and dissolution of the incipient nation-state since independence in 1948. While colonial divide-and-rule policies, the rise of ethnonationalist lobbies, structural discrimination and majoritarian democracy have been… Read more »
The Bharatanatyam Dancer as Transnational Interpreter
At home in the world? by Janet O’Shea, TDR: The Drama Review, UK, 2003 Bharatanatyam Dancer as Transnational Interpreter The stage lights come up gradually as a bharatanatyam dancer, costumed in a tailored silk sari and beautifully adorned in jewelry, walks out from backstage. In a manner neither formal nor completely relaxed, she walks downstage… Read more »
HRW: Minorities, Activists Targeted
Actions Contradict Pledges of Legal Reform by Human Rights Watch, New York, January 13, 2022 The Sri Lankan government in 2021 suppressed minority communities, harassed activists, and undermined democratic institutions, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2022. The government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa failed to carry out legal reforms promised to its international partners… Read more »
Review: ‘You People’ by Nikita Lalwani
The limits of compassion by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, The Guardian, Manchester UK, April 1, 2020 A London pizzeria staffed by undocumented migrants is the setting for a moving exploration of how to be kind in an unkind world Nikita Lalwani’s 2007 debut Gifted, the story of a maths prodigy raised by her Hindu parents in Cardiff… Read more »
Memoriam: Professor Margaret Trawick (1948 – 2022)
by Sachi Sri Kantha, January 23, 2022 Among Eelam Tamils, a few Tamil women academics such as Dr. Rajani Thiranagama (1954-1989) and Radhika Coomaraswamy (b. 1953) wrote anti-LTTE tracts, for their personal glory as beacons of human rights. But, Professor Margaret Trawick (1948-2022), though not being born as a Tamil, contributed her energy as an… Read more »