Groundviews commissioned The Picture Press to capture through photography the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka on Boxing Day, 2004. As journalist Amantha Perera notes, The tsunami took a dramatic toll on unsuspecting Sri Lankans – 35,322 were killed, half a million were displaced, and more than 100,000 houses were destroyed. Half of the damage struck areas had been hard-hit by ...
Groundviews is extremely pleased to recognise that Kannan Arunasalam has won the 2013 South Asian International Documentary Festival’s Prism Short Award for ‘Kerosene’. This short film was one of three produced by Kannan with utilising a small grant by Groundviews in 2011. First screened in Colombo and subsequently featured on the critically acclaimed Moving Images website, ‘Kerosene’ and his ...
“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.” Karl Marx No one knows how far the government is planning to go ...
Photo courtesy JDS We understand that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is planning to compound undisclosed securities fraud by some billionaire investors. Media reports have begun to circulate that Environmental Resources Investments (ERI) and its Directors have agreed with the SEC to pay an insignificant fine of Rs 10 million and compound an offence related to securities trading. While ...
Image courtesy ITV News “It was under these circumstances that Rajapaksa agreed to forego his own limousine and travel to Marlborough House at Pall Mall in an unmarked vehicle belonging to the Metropolitan Police . The President and First Lady entered Marlborough House premises in a Range Rover bearing the number plate VX 12 CYY. The vehicle did not ...
Reports online suggest that Dialog Axiata and Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), inter alia, are blocking access to a number of Tamil language websites reporting on Sri Lanka. In the morning we were asked whether we could access tamilwin.com. https://twitter.com/nirananketell/status/217501837438353408 We tested on SLT ADSL, Dialog HSDPA and via an Etisalat dongle. Only Etisalat loaded the page. @nirananketell Nope – ...
Urban Development Authority (UDA) has seen fit to place a used army tank there for everyone to see. Every evening, as the park fills up, people clamour to get an up close look at the vehicle. While such objects naturally attract the attention of most people, it is surprising that the authorities have chosen to place this in a “child ...
Image courtesy Grassrooted For nearly three decades, it remained Sri Lanka’s biggest story. Over the years, the resplendent island became known, not for its human development indicators or as a vibrant democracy, but as the birth place of the deadly Liberation Tigers – and what fuelled its birth, growth and its destructive impact on the island. When I walked ...
Image from DW How do I define my identity? At first glance, the answer would be simple and clear: I am a French citizen with Sri Lankan origins. This would be enough for any administrative paperwork. But in daily life, the reality is quite different depending on the situations that we are facing. The first question would be: Am ...
Image courtesy Read Sri Lanka [Editors note: The Supreme Court ruling on the Divineguma Bill presented to Parliament just before this article was published noted that the Bill has to be passed with 2/3rd majority in Parliament and that Clause 8 has to be approved at a referendum. See original tweet by Daily Mirror here.] The current battle between the Judiciary ...
State Responsibility to Protect Human Rights Defenders Sunila Abeysekera Commemoration, September 9th 2014 We as individual human rights activists, as well as the human rights community as a whole greatly miss Sunila today. As we struggle to grapple with myriads of contemporary challenges we miss her indomitable character, and energy. As we gather today to celebrate her life and ...
Image from Himal Southasian, Sri Lanka’s alternatives abroad, December 2010 [Editors note: Also read The Disillusionment of the Diaspora and Two years after war’s end in Sri Lanka: What can the Tamil and Sinhala diaspora do? that offer context and counter-points to this article.] In a recent post entitled “How The Diaspora Can Overthrow The Government”, blogger Indi Samarajiva put forth the notion ...
The LAKBIMAnEWS cartoon on Sunday seemed to have ruffled some feathers. Going by the tweets that were critical of the cartoon, I noticed some card-carrying activists of the anti- Sri Lankan lobby, who may have mistaken LAKBIMAnEWS for one of the Sri Lankan government mouthpieces – which LAKBIMAnEWS is not – and decided to make avail of this opportunity ...
Photo courtesy CNS News Pope Francis is set to arrive in Sri Lanka, on 13th January, despite several appeals by Catholics including me, to postpone the visit. He will arrive few days days after we Sri Lankans used our ballot to put a stop to growing dictatorship, despite a dirty election campaign that saw deliberate attacks on opposition, massive ...
Photo by Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters courtesy Christian Science Monitor Another round of elections has been fixed and the country is turned into election mode. Elections are said to be a benchmark of democracy, and then why are we bothered when more and more elections are held? More and more elections, have we correspondingly increased democracy in Sri Lanka? What does ...
Photo courtesy Ada Derana My new neighbour, a quiet middle class, young Sinhala Buddhist professional from beyond Matara, who started constructing his own house, brought down a “Kattadi mahathtaya” from his village to evoke blessings on the property, the new construction and on himself and his young family, before the foundation stone was ...
Photo by Thyagi Ruwanpathirana The speech delivered by Ven. Galaboda-atté Gnanasara at a public meeting in the Aluthgama on 14 June 2014 is broadly considered as the primary cause that triggered the subsequent rampage and violence in that area. Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), the organisation of which Ven. Gnanasara is the Secretary General, is squarely accused of encouraging, instigating and ...
Image courtesy The Guardian On 10 May 2013, former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 80 years in prison. It was the first time that an ex-head of state had been convicted for genocide by a court in his or her own country. The case is of international ...
The politics of child abuse is no different from the politics of human rights, women’s rights etc, etc. I use the word politics in the sense of labels we use to divide people: to elevate the rights of our preferred set of human beings to a pedestal far above everything else, to isolate them and then demand that they ...
Original photograph REUTERS/Damir Sagolj It is always a curious and odd little matter, to witness how even Buddhists become so obsessively attached to ‘sacred’ lands and in protecting them, commit acts seemingly prompted by hatred, delusion and ill-will. Ideally, lands should not become ‘sacred’ for simple reasons. The Buddha, in attacking the rigid and unethical caste-system during his time, placed ...
