by Sachi Sri Kantha, May 4, 2014 Last month, South American Macaws kept by President Mahinda Rajapaksa made news, due to their surprising escape from high security territory. I have received exclusive details about the current plight of these macaws, from my source ‘Colombo Crow’. For four days (from April 16th to 20th), this news… Read more »
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Reading from a prepared script, Mr. Karunanidhi spoke for an hour, discussing at length the state of Sri Lankan Tamils and his dedication to the Tamil language.
These issues, emotive in the past, are now largely symbolic, of little electoral currency in this parliamentary election, and his speech was remarkable mostly for its omissions. Mr. Karunanidhi refrained from addressing the defining themes of this election: widespread disenchantment with corruption and dynastic politics. The audience heard him in respectful silence, but his remarks drew few cheers.
It was unusual to see a veteran politician like Mr. Karunanidhi straying so far from the popular pulse. But it was understandable, too, for the issues of corruption and dynastic politics are ones on which Mr. Karunanidhi and his party have long ceded the moral ground.
The problem points to a particularly worrisome situation for the people in the north who bore much of the brunt of the ethnic war and who depend entirely on agriculture and fisheries for their livelihood. Photo: Meera Srinivasan With the monsoon failing, the fisheries sector not showing much promise, and disputes over water sharing, northern… Read more »
by International Crisis Group, Brussels, February 28, 2014 This briefing note draws on Crisis Group’s extensive reporting on post-war political developments in Sri Lanka, as well as recent interviews with a range of Sri Lankan stakeholders. Read all our published reports on Sri Lanka. Overview The government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) has failed to comply with two… Read more »
The agreement, announced by the Syrian government last week, called for a three-day cease-fire to allow women, children and older men to leave a rebel-held part of the city while food was distributed to those who remained inside.
But the cease-fire was shaky from the start. Some residents refused to leave, fearing their departure would prompt the killing of the remaining rebels. Pro-government Facebook pages also criticized the deal and began a campaign called “No to feeding the gunmen.”
In the case of Burma, India and America’s good cop, bad cop routine worked to ultimately undo the military junta.
But will India and America reenact the same play in Sri Lanka or are their objectives diverging? …
Tamil Nadu activists have chosen to protest against the American resolution because it does not include charges of Genocide. While that is reasonable request, protesting it misses the tree for the wood. Tamil Nadu’s immediate focus should be in getting Delhi to take a public position within the next few weeks. Letting Delhi wait until the voting time, is a strategic mistake by the Tamil Nadu brethren. Tamil Nadu activists should first mobilize towards getting Delhi to openly support an International Investigation mechanism. Without that, protesting the resolution for what it does not include is premature and above all not prudent. It only helps Delhi’s agenda of deflection.
by ‘Colombo Telegraph,’ January 20, 2014 New Year 2014 is starting well for us. The War had got us into a cocoon in which we managed howsoever we could, not really appreciating the changes taking place locally and globally all around us. We failed to appreciate the nuances of political or administrative terminology too. We… Read more »
Fury in Sri Lanka at U.S. Embassy Tweet on Killing of Tamils
The Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense expressed shock and anger on Friday atwhat it called a “baseless allegation” against the nation’s military in a photo caption posted on the official Twitter feed of the United States Embassy the day before. The photograph showed the American ambassador to Sri Lanka, Michele J. Sison, and Stephen J. Rapp, the United… Read more »
The seventh death anniversary of humorist Art Buchwald (1925-2007) falls on January 17th. And for this occasion, I also release the 5th consecutive list of news-making 15 individuals who are natives to South Asia region, for 2013. These selections are based on the words or deeds performed by the chosen individuals during 2013, as indicated… Read more »
by Karthick RM, ‘Sanhati,’ West Bengal, India, October 10, 2012 Countering insurgencies is as old as states and empires. As a concept, however, study in Counterinsurgency (COIN) gained momentum in the colonial period so as to deal with frequently occurring rebellions in colonies as well as to counter the “communist menace”. COIN grew as a… Read more »
by Watchdog, ‘Groundviews.org,’ Colombo, September 19, 2013 On 25th September 2012, the Menik Farm camp in Vavuniya, which at its peak, housed close to 300,000 internally displaced persons, was officially closed down when the Government of Sri Lanka relocated the last batch of IDPs. This formally marked the closure of all post-2009 IDP camps in the… Read more »
The TNA said the military continued to engage in civilian activities and were clearly trying to influence the 714,000-strong mainly Tamil electorate, and support candidates of Rajapakse’s UPFA.
by Sachi Sri Kantha, August 21, 2013 Recently I completed reading a wonderful biography on C.N. Annadurai (1909-1969), the founding leader of DMK, by R. Kannan. It’s title was simply ‘Anna’ – appearing palindromic in English. This led me to study the semantics of this endearing Tamil word. This essay is also a sort of… Read more »
Mr. Deputy Speaker, my Adjournment Motion that I have proposed to move today deals with nine situations pertaining to land both in the Northern and the Eastern Provinces. Land issues are a matter of grave concern to the Tamil-speaking people, both the Tamil people and the Muslim people in the North and the East. We… Read more »
Major General (RTD) Nanda Mallawarachchi had been appointed as the Ministry Secretary. He was formerly an Ambassador to Indonesia and a former Army Chief of Staff.
The more incisive comments on myprevious posting, The Meanings of Wigneswaran, raise several inter-related issues that have been central to the Tamil Question and still bedevil action. This writing responds to and builds on them and attempts to probe further. It is necessary at the outset to clarify an unfortunate misreading in one comment, that… Read more »
The Sri Lankan government has made no real progress in holding accountable those responsible for the execution style slaying of 17 aid workers seven years ago despite renewed international calls for action. On August 4, 2006, gunmen executed 17 Sri Lankan aid workers – 16 ethnic Tamils, four of them women, and a Muslim – with the… Read more »
by Peter Schalk, TamilNation.org, UK, 1997 Professor Peter Schalk has written extensively on subjects related to the struggle for Tamil Eelam. This essay is excerpted from* Martyrdom and Political Resistance : Essays from Asia and Europe (Comparative Asian Studies, 18) edited by Joyce Pettigrew published by VU University Press for Centre Asian Studies, Amsterdam. The book is essential reading for… Read more »
Across the Bay of Bengal, a Therevada Sri Lankan monk—adopting what has become a common strategy among Tibetan Buddhist monks—self-immolated in the street. The monk, Ven. Indarathana, set himself on fire outside the Temple of the Tooth—the holiest Buddhist shrine in the country—in protest of the Muslim halal method of slaughtering animals.
Ven. Indarathana belonged to the Buddhist revivalist group Voice of Sinhala, a hardline Buddhist rights group. This could qualify the self-immolation as the first connected with an anti-Muslim organization. According to BBC correspondent Charles Haviland, Sinhalese ultranationalist government ministers are praising the incident as “an act of self-sacrifice for the good of the country.”
The similarities of the Myanmar and the Sri Lankan states are obvious. Majority of the people in both countries practice Theravada Buddhism. And both countries are plagued by ethnic conflicts.