Image from SL Online News “You have to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised.” – George Orwell, 1984 Talking to former members of the LTTE in Sri Lanka reveals much about their lives and their post-war challenges. Their ...
Along with a number of others in the original email list, including the President of Sri Lanka and leading MPs, Groundviews was forwarded a compelling presentation by the University of Moratuwa Teachers Association on Sri Lanka’s higher education crisis. If this was produced by any NGO, the President and Government would no doubt have immediately and volubly dismissed, denied ...
Photo by AFP, via Sri Lanka Brief Since the end of war in 2009, Sri Lanka has become a country full of zealots and patriots singing the song of country first, religion first and race first. Imponderably, the result that reaped due to this zealotry and patriotism is a fragmenting country along religious and racial lines, religions being hijacked ...
Photo courtesy Beyond Borders blog On this day in 2005, the Sri Lankan parliament unanimously passed the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act (PDVA). The Act does not create a new offence of ‘domestic violence’ but instead defines domestic violence, firstly, as acts of physical violence, which constitute only those offences already recognized under Chapter XVI of the Penal Code. ...
Image courtesy AFP The TNA has swept the polls in the North. More importantly, the Tamil people have voted courageously, convincingly, and clearly. It was an expected outcome, but as President Rajapaksa took off to New York, he would have known that numbers and statistics on paper, more than just mind-made presumptions, can have a very coruscating impact, that ...
Photo courtesy Contribute Magazine The choice of Sri Lanka as a venue for CHOGM 2013 has always remained controversial. But now that most member countries have agreed to go ahead and participate in the high-profile summit happening in Colombo, the moment has arrived for the Commonwealth to reassess its commitment towards its own values. ### Two weeks from now, ...
Still image captured from BBC video interview. Excerpt from first conversation FJ: Mr. Rajapaksa are you threatening me? GR: Yes! I am threatening you! Write every single word I have told you if you want – you write a bloody f…..g word and we will see… FJ: Mr. Rajapaksa I called you as a journalist to inform you of what ...
Milinda Moragoda’s on-going mayoral campaign is interesting on many counts. Particularly appealing to me is that it is extremely web media savvy. The campaign’s central website, http://www.ourcmb.com, is leagues ahead of what any candidate, at any election in Sri Lanka has produced. Aimed to elicit public feedback on a 12 point, 100 day plan for Colombo, the website is a ...
I read with great interest this article in the Guardian about nearly quarter of men in Asia-Pacific admitting to committing rape according to a new UN study. As Sri Lanka was one of the countries that were a part of the study I looked around a little more and came across a few articles in the local media that ...
An image of a true, 100% verified, authentic, original, perfect Buddhist. Not. I wasn’t at the vigil because I don’t do vigils and if I were to make an exception it would be for an anti-BBS/SR demonstration spearheaded by the Left (in our case that would be the JVP and FSP), as are most anti-racist demonstrations all over the ...
Photograph courtesy UN Sri Lanka At the invitation of the Sri Lankan Government, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay visited Sri Lanka at the end of August in what was, in her words, “the longest official visit I have ever made to a single country”. Groundviews requested Selvaraj Rajasegar, a colleague at the Media Unit at the ...
The Hungry Ghosts is Shyam Selvadurai’s fourth novel, and almost certainly his best. The themes are familiar, from the personal strife caused by the narrator’s sexuality and ethnicity, to the political backdrop of Sri Lanka’s civil war, but the whole narrative is handled with an accomplishment and quiet authority that marks a real step up in Selvadurai’s prose. The ...
[Editors note: Watch SBS Dateline's Sri Lanka's New Wave, broadcast first in Australia on 28 August 2012, here.] Dear Mark, I am intensely troubled by the tenor of your report on Sri Lankan Tamil refugees on today’s Dateline. The picture you painted of the country doesn’t accord with any of the accounts I’ve heard, nor with well documented reports by ...
Michael Mendis is the winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Asia. ‘The Sarong-Man in the Old House, and an Incubus for a Rainy Night’ can be read in full on Granta. Upon winning the prestigious prize, Michael averred, “Although writing, for me, is inherently a personal exercise, involving a distillation of private thoughts and private confusions, ...
Photo courtesy Today There is a limit to tolerance, and this is it. In its short history as an independent republic, Sri Lanka has seen more bloodshed than seems fair. Many of our citizens have been active participants in the bombing, burning, shooting, hacking and torturing of each other, and many more have supported this both actively and tacitly. And ...
Photograph courtesy Vikalpa The youth of Sri Lanka express their dismay and alarm over the apparent surge in religious intolerance and communal discord that has permeated our society in the post-LTTE era and particularly in recent months. It is a pity that the ‘infamous’ “Grandpass incident”, a subject of intense political drama a few weeks back, was neither “isolated ...
Image via Newston Last time I am writing opened letter. Peoples are reading it and telling me, The Silva, you are writing very intelligent things in support of Our Majesty and his country. We are proud of you. Even His Majesty is sending text message early in the morning saying well done! It is true that my neighbour and ...
To remember Black July, Groundviews brought together leading documentary filmmakers, photographers, activists, theorists and designers, in Sri Lanka and abroad, to focus on just how deeply the anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983 shaped our imagination, lives, society and polity. The project is called 30 Years Ago and details of it can be read here. The Picture Press was commissioned by Groundviews to interrogate the use, access ...
It was late evening in the Persian Gulf and there was a cool summer breeze wafting through the wide wooden door as the two ladies approached it. One of them carried my favoured Sri-Lankan sweetmeat “Lavariya”, which she presented to me with a kiss on both cheeks. I returned the favour by handing a parcel of homemade dhodhol specially brought ...
[Editors note: Also read the related post ‘Diaspora Diaries’: Exploring Connections and Interactions with Sri Lanka] Kannan Arunasalam is a documentary filmmaker and narrative journalist. He was born in Jaffna, grew up in London, and returned to Sri Lanka in 2005. This year, International Alert commissioned Kannan to make filmed portraits of Sri Lankan diaspora members, to illustrate the ...
