On Sunday night (March 16) Ruki Fernando and Fr Praveen, prominent Sri Lankan human rights defenders, were taken into detention in Kilinochchi under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. This followed the arrest of Jeyakumari Balendran and her young daughter on March 14; Balendran, the mother of a disappeared former LTTE cadre, has been outspoken about political disappearances in Sri Lanka, ...
It’s been three months today since my mother died. Her death has been everything like her life: big, tremendously powerful, changing everything, moving everyone within its reach to powerful and exciting revelations about their own lives, their own existences, their own choices. This was her; allowing choices to define who we are, allowing these definitions to shape what we want, ...
Malala Yousafzai On the 9th of October, just two days ago, Malala Yousafzai, 14 years old, was shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan. Even when she was as young as 11 years old, she was an outspoken critic of the Taliban, with brave, smart and articulate views expressed clearly in a diary she wrote for BBC Urdu. She ...
Human Rights Watch 2016 There is a constitutional coup in Sri Lanka. There is much more about it at Groundviews, but you can start here if you like. Today, we marched in the thousands in the country’s capital and commercial centre, Colombo. This is a response to things I am reading on social media this evening. I think if ...
What happened in 1983, I wasn’t there to see it – but of course, I, like many others of my generation who came after, are privy to a collective memory, an experience felt by association, by default; the muscle memory of our parents, relatives, their friends and their relatives, passed on through stories, recollections, little photographic bits, fragments. In every ...
One Billion Rising, 14 February, Colombo. Photo courtesy of Tehani Ariyaratne. We are rising to end violence against women on Valentine’s Day, 2013. Rising because we can; we must. Because we as a society are responsible for what happens to our women. Because it’s important for our sons to know what we know, that they learn what we have learned. ...
No one asks you ‘Are you Tamil?’ when you wear a pottu It doesn’t bother people – make them uncomfortable It’s very commonplace to wear flowers in your hair – all sorts: Jasmine, Frangipani, Gardenia It’s not bad-ass for women to have piercings on their noses or men to have piercings on their ears (even a piercing through the middle ...
The Jaffna Public Library, before it was burnt in 1981. 31 years ago, today, the Jaffna Public Library, situated in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, was burnt to the ground. It was collateral damage of a long and bitter ethnic conflict which ultimately claimed many other things of value, including several thousands of human lives, property, homes, landmarks of culture and religion, of ...
Taken from Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s official Facebook page.I made some quick and immediate reflections after the large UNP rally last Tuesday the 30th of October. I attended the JVP meeting at the Nugegoda supermarket last Thursday, the 1st of November, and wanted to do the same. It was well-attended; an organic turn-out only (no people ‘brought in’ for this ...
Summer Evening (1947, Edward Hopper) To know you is a thing that makes my life what it is - the reason I am special, lucky, the reason I am myself. To have become who I am today with you, because of you, is among the things that I know for certain are true and real. To have passed through the phases ...
Emma Watson, at the UN A young, educated, privileged, white woman-celebrity gets appointed a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador six months ago (UN Women is the United Nations organisation that works with women’s rights and issues). At the UN General Assembly, to launch a UN Women campaign on gender equality, this celebrity spokesperson, the Goodwill Ambassador, is asked to make a ...
Nallur Kovil, Jaffna (2013) The only thing apart from a small makeshift shrine in this room is a cot; a good, old-fashioned baby’s cot made from sturdy wood. The cot is stuffed with photographs; mostly black and white photographs, presumably old photographs, in their frames. The cot is almost overflowing with these photographs, artefacts from the life and history of ...
Now the disorientation sets in – where am I? – who am I? – I ask, waking suddenly in the middle of the night, in a bed that has not yet entirely begun to feel like my own. Ha, you don’t know it yet, you don’t know who I am – that I am loved by some incredibly powerful people, ...
Lahore feminists (1983) protest the Islamisization of Zia government. Feminism is the only real way to challenge sexism; when we reject feminism, we play right into its hands. You would be surprised at the amount of messages I get from women (writing to say they so agree with something I have written) which begin with ‘I am not a feminist, ...
Happy Birthday, Ammi. Thank you for Pedro Almodovar. Thank you for T.S Elliot and Virginia Woolf and Germaine Greer. Thank you for that time you woke us up at 2 AM in order to watch the sun rise over Konark, in Orissa. Thank you for always believing that life is worth living, that it is beautiful and fun and interesting ...
I’d forgotten that most people don’t know as much about Sri Lanka as one always expects, in India People raise their eyebrows, intrigued, suspicious; ‘Why do you know so much about India? Indian politics?’ They don’t know the first thing about Sri Lanka ‘There was a war? Really?’ ‘Do you have your own language? Does it have a script?’ Lost ...
Who pins the fall of a sari, To the back of your sari blouse, Or zips up your dress, when the zipper is at the back? Cleaning up is a two-person job; Who spots that line of ants going into the cereal box when you’ve missed it? Who shuts the fridge door that you’ve accidentally left open, Or takes on ...
‘All Hail Sauron’ reads a placard at a protest outside London’s hot new building, The Shard. The Shard is now Europe’s tallest building. Read more about the UK’s latest and most ridiculous show of penis-power here.
Sri Lanka’s education system, particularly the higher-education system, our great socialist dream, is perhaps one of the very few things we got right – at least to some extent. It remains a fact of pride for us that any student in Sri Lanka who qualifies for University entrance can attend University and receive higher-education of a very good quality, regardless of ...
Tehelka is one of India’s leading independent English language news magazines. It’s an award-winning publication now well-known for its top-quality reportage of politics and news in South Asia and for its daring ventures in investigative reporting. I have been an ardent admirer and reader for many years, and now I’ve been published in it for the first time. My piece ...
