Photo courtesy Euronews Just a few weeks since the impeachment of Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, no one is really talking about it anymore. Interviews conducted by and featured on Groundviews at the time impeachment proceedings were on clearly flagged serious fears over the independence of the judiciary. In order to ascertain the lasting impact of the impeachment ...
Photo courtesy The Nation “…Sri Lankan foreign policy must be centred on a non-hostile relationship with India…Choice is the essential question; not only the choices open to us, but the choices likely to be taken by others…” - Mervyn de Silva, ‘External Aspects of the Ethnic Issue’ (1985), Crisis Commentaries (2001: pp68-78) In the aftermath of the victory over the LTTE the Sri Lankan state ...
Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images via Al Jazeera America In a well-known TED talk, the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie talks of the dangers of the single story.[1] “The single story creates stereotypes,” Adichie says, “and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” Her ...
Groundviews interviewed via email Benjamin Dix, who along with Lindsay Pollock are producing The Vanni, a multimedia graphic novel based on the hellish denouement of Sri Lanka’s 27 year old war in the first half of 2009. A preview can be viewed here. Since the live web version requires a modern browser with very good broadband, we’ve embedded just part of the ...
Photo courtesy the Daily Beast A long awaited concerted action has now been initiated by the opposition parties in their identification of a common candidate for the upcoming presidential elections, and the agenda for action. Understandably, the opposition needs a simple yet mass rallying slogan for their campaign. The abolishing of the executive presidential system has been designated by ...
Image courtesy Sydney Morning Herald On 1st November 2012, Sri Lanka was taken up for discussion as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). The last UPR was in 2008, and under scrutiny was Sri Lanka’s human rights record over the past four years, that significantly, saw the end of the country’s ...
During my recent visits to Batticaloa I met many elders for my I Am narratives project. Many of them, like Father Harry Miller S.J., talked about the difficult period for Batticaloans during the 1990s. This period was marked by thousands of disappearances, Tamil Tiger attacks on mosques and civilians, and retaliatory violence against ordinary Muslims and Tamils. But somehow ...
Photo courtesy The Blue Bookcase Around two months ago, I picked up on a whim Hint Fiction edited by Robert Swartwood. Swartwood’s definition of hint fiction is ‘a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story’. As the book’s blurb on Amazon notes, “The stories in this collection run the gamut from playful to tragic, ...
Image courtesy Karava of Sri Lanka Due to the war with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam for over three decades in Sri Lanka, the attention of many including academics, journalists, foreign observers and leaders was focused on Ethnicity –majority and minority. There was an upsurge of literature –both popular and academic- using ethnicity as the framework and key concept ...
When Michael Roberts left Peradeniya in the late seventies, he was part of an exodus of intellectuals from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, arguably one of the best universities at that time. The exodus of academics at that time was compelled by the economic difficulties faced by university dons. It was the second wave of such emigration that diminished ...
Photo by AP, via Occupy.com Two weeks ago we found ourselves sitting in a room full of three wheeler drivers working in the Colombo Fort area on what seemed like an all or nothing mission. Of all taboo topics we work with, sex work is perhaps one of the most difficult to approach. The level of judgement and the ...
Photo by Pankaj Nangia/Bloomberg News, via The Japan Times The UPFA regime has accomplished an unprecedented hegemonic political power, consummated by landslide electoral victories: Presidential election, January 2010, Parliamentary Elections March 2010 and the subsequent Provincial council elections, except, crucially in the North. They have consolidated their rural voter base in a remarkable fashion. As the opposition claims, these electoral ...
Image courtesy Thuppahi’s blog June 2013 saw violent clashes between small groups of Sri Lankans at cricket grounds around the UK. Although barely reported by the mainstream media, for members of Voices for Reconciliation (VfR) – a peace-building network that facilitates dialogue within and between every Sri Lankan community in the UK- these altercations served as a potent reminder ...
Image courtesy Ron Haviv’s photo essay The Fires Within: The Sri Lankan Civil War For many in Sri Lanka and around the globe, war is generic. Images of war victims are anonymous and nonspecific. If the caption on a photograph of a child war victim is altered, the meaning of the image can be changed and the photo reused ...
Image courtesy Vikalpa As noted in the mainstream media, “thousands of university teachers, undergraduates and trade unionists marched to the Hyde Park yesterday, accusing the government of turning a blind eye on their grievances. Lecturers representing all universities in the country participated in yesterday’s protest organised by the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA).” Vikalpa was present at the ...
Photo: Paula Bronstein for The Global Mail “The Muhammedans, an alien people, who in the early part of the 19th century were common traders, by Shylockian methods became prosperous like the Jews […] What the German is to the Britisher that the Muhammedan is to the Sinhalese. He is an alien to the Sinhalese by religion, race and language ...
Photo courtesy Vikalpa Ganesan Nimalaruban’s murder in July last year wasn’t an issue for or comprehensively covered in the mainstream media in Sri Lanka. Vikalpa covered the circumstances of his murder and funeral, and this content was translated into English and published onGroundviews. Responses to the stories on both sites included a former high ranking UN diplomat and senior civil servants who ...
Photo credit FCO On 5th February 2013, UK Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt hosted a live interview session via Twitter. Alistair Burt is Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs. At the time of the interview, the Minister had recently returned from an official visit to Sri Lanka. Twitter interviews are not new. The first international diplomat to do so on Sri ...
Photo courtesy UNDP Sri Lanka (A presentation made on 16th November, 2013 at London at a meeting of Charitable Organisations working with war victims in Sri Lanka) The end of the war saw many national plans by the government to develop the war affected areas. But there is none for the women affected by the war who are the ...
In October 2013 Kalyana Tissa Thero of the Seth Sevana Lama Nivasa of Attambagaskanda, Vavuniya was arrested for sexually abusing a 9 year old child. The Buddhist monk was kept in remand custody and medical evidence confirmed the sexual abuse of the child on 12.10.2013. Subsequently the custody of the remaining 22 children of the children’s home was taken ...
