Photograph courtesy PACT S.J.V. Chelvanayakam Memorial Oration, 26 April 2014 I am thankful to the S.J.V. Chelvanayakam Commemoration Committee for inviting me to deliver this memorial oration on the occasion of the 37th death anniversary of S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, Q.C., a revered leader of the Sri Lankan Tamils. I am told that I am only the second Sinhalese, after Comrade ...
Photo courtesy IPS Prof. N.Balakrishnan Memorial Oration delivered in Colombo on 21st June 2014 Introduction It is five years since the decisive end of the civil war in May 2009. The government’s approach to resolving the long festering ethnic conflict in the country has been reconciliation and peace through economic development. Although I do have reservations about the validity ...
Screen capture from video of President’s address to the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 24, 2013, New York, posted by the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Washington D.C. In what would have been an unprecedented engagement with Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa during his visit to the UN in New York (on-going at ...
On 2nd July, the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) organised a panel discussion on preventing human smuggling and trafficking. The event was as much a forum to discuss the incredible increase in, despite ridiculous government denials, boats with asylum seekers from Sri Lanka heading to Australia as it was a panel that sought to address mainstream media misconceptions about ...
Image courtesy Sify Sinhala nationalists who deny that the Tamils have any grievances are now campaigning for the abolition of the Provincial Councils under the 13th Amendment. But S.W.R.D the western educated liberal who introduced the Sinhala Only Law realized that an injustice was done to the Tamil people for it was not only an instrument to discriminate against ...
Image from Lanka Standard After nearly 7 years of postgraduate education and independent research experience abroad, I returned to Sri Lanka in mid 2003, to work in my mother country Sri Lanka that gave me free education all the way upto university level. When I left Johns Hopkins University in USA, some of my friends cautioned me of the ...
This afternoon, the remaining residents of 34 watta in Wanathamulla had surprise visitors. Brigadier Samarasinghe who is the Project Director of the UDA’s Urban Regeneration Programme, accompanied by several other UDA officials, police and demolition equipment turned up at 34 watta and informed the residents of imminent evictions and the destruction of their homes. Most of the residents of ...
Photo courtesy Marisa de Silva Tamil families of the disappeared, primarily from the North, gathered in front of the area between the Public Library and Duriappa Stadium by 2pm, on 15th Nov., as they thought the visiting British Prime Minister would land at the Duriappa Stadium. They were accompanied by some Christian clergy and activists from Colombo. The British ...
Photo courtesy CNN June 2014 will go down in the annals of Sri Lankan history as a turning point in ethnic relations, with large scale communal violence being unleashed on a most hapless minority. This month saw the worst acts of violence targeted against the country’s second largest minority, the Muslims, since the infamous anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983. ...
Image courtesy The Sri Lanka Guardian The TNA victory has shown that Sri Lanka remains a functioning democracy; that it functions when there is competition; and that with or without the 17th amendment and even under the tightest military supervision, the government can be electorally defeated. Having won the war, the Government has lost the peace in the North ...
[Editors note: Prof. Samarajiva is at the time of writing, the Head of the Policy Planning Group, Milinda for Mayor Campaign. Groundviews is critical of all political parties and candidates, but not equally so. Prof. Samarajiva's article is published here as the continuation of a lengthy exchange on the topic of RTI on Milinda Moragoda's Facebook page. Please also read Milinda ...
Image courtesy Justice in Conflict Five years after the war I often think of how it could have been. A President who, the day after the war ends, speaks to the people of the North and East, emphasises that the government was facing a ruthless enemy but expresses remorse for the suffering they have undergone and pledges to make ...
Image courtesy Sri Lanka Brief The Rajapakse Administration has deployed a key architect of its post war policy towards minorities and war affected communities in Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga, through his position as Chair of the Action plan to implement the LLRC, to be the chief defender of the Government’s case to the international community in general and the ...
Just over ten years ago, a powerful undersea earthquake caused a devastating tsunami that rapped around two-thirds of Sri Lanka’s coastline on Boxing Day, at around 8:30am. Being a holiday, locals were fishing, bathing and playing on the beaches. Within a matter of minutes some 35,000 people were dead, thousands were missing and over half a million survivors would ...
Photo by Abdul-Halik Azeez, courtesy The Picture Press The ambitious Urban Regeneration Project (URP) launched by the Ministry of Defense and Urban Development aims to transform Colombo into a world-class destination for tourism and investment. Central to this eliminating “shanties, slums and other dilapidated housing from the city of Colombo by resettlement of the families presently living under unhygienic ...
On November 28, 2013 a pregnant mother from Malaiyalapuram North[1] (Malaiyalapuram) in Kilinochchi District died at Jaffna Teaching Hospital. She was 17 and 2/7 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. She had been injected with Jadelle,[2] a Progestogen-only subdermal implant (PODSI), [3] on September 07, 2013.[4] The deceased – Ms. Manjula Satheeshkumar – was twenty-six-years-old.[5] She was ...
Image courtesy Simon Fraser University On September 21, 2013, Sri Lankans Without Borders in partnership with Groundviews launched the De Zoysa-Sivanayagam 2014 Fellowship in Digital Journalism. As noted on SLWB’s website, Lasantha Wickrematunge led the fight for press freedom in Sri Lanka, “unbowed and unafraid,” for a number of years before he was assassinated in 2009. It was a ...
Photo courtesy The Global Mail Tell me my brother in the North, Who is not allowed to weep today Tell me about the times when you laughed On your long road to defeat and subjugation Tell us as we too begin Our own mirthful journey to hell Lined with billboards of paradise Did you too laugh my brother? When ...
Groundviews has already published a detailed record of the violence the BBS has meted out on Ven. Wataraka Thero, the Chief Incumbent of the Rotalawela Mahaweli Maha Viharaya in Mahiyanganaya, in the Uva province. Ven. Wataraka Thero was recently found injured and bound in a ditch near Colombo recently. The Police later claimed the injuries were self-inflicted, and after he was discharged ...
Photo courtesy CNN The photos of prisoners, like thugs, holding a few machine guns on the roof of Welikada Prison, challenging a government which is capable of terrorizing an entire country, what do they tell us? The news of the mass murder which was a response to that challenge, what does that tell us? The photos and the news ...
