Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon receives Independent Review Panel on Sri Lanka report from ASG Charles Petrie. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe. Courtesy UN News Centre. The BBC’s revelation on the leaked “penultimate” draft report of an internal UN review on UN’s handling of humanitarian crisis during the last stages of Vanni war in 2009, has justifiably invoked immense interest – on its ...
Photo courtesy Janikissima on Flickr Last night’s arrest of Ruki Fernando and Fr. Praveen in Kilinochchi on terrorism charges, soon after the arrest of Jeyakumari Balendran and her young daughter on suspicion of harbouring a criminal, is extremely disturbing and an urgent call to action. In stark contrast to what the Government says in Geneva is what it does ...
Perspectives of Sri Lankans over the last decade or so makes for fascinating reading five years after the end of the war. This infographic is only a snapshot of the hope, frustration, changes and divides between communities in Sri Lanka since 2001. Looking at this makes us wonder what the future holds. Will cycles of hope and frustration continue? Will there ...
Image from Asianews.it School closed early today. Amma was looking very jumpy when she came to pick me up, but she wouldn’t tell me why. When we went to get Loku and Chuti, Chuti was nowhere to be seen. We walked all over school looking for him and finally found him running around with a chair in his hand ...
In happier days. Photo courtesy Times of AP Accounts, claiming varying degrees of authenticity abound of the impending impeachment of the Chief Justice. This is not the first time this has been attempted. Denizens of Hulftsdorf within its ranks stopped the UNF government in its tracks from attempting to do this. A third of the members of parliament are ...
The Daily Mirror ran this story today. Rather than critique it, we did a simple thing. We changed the gender of those mentioned in the story and changed rapists to criminals. If you think the following article is utterly absurd and bizarre, then why accept the original as fit for print? ### Police find two school boys at bus ...
The Sri Lankan Army: Humane or heinous? Photo from Now Public [Editors note: Also read JAFFNA: BRUTAL ASSAULT OF CIVILIANS IN NAVANTHURAI and The attack on TNA Parliamentarians in Jaffna: A timeline of outrageous denials (Updated)] These days, the Sri Lankan Army appears to be somewhat bored. Despite increasing post-war forays into urban development, vegetable transportation and tourism – wonderfully ...
Photo by Pat Roque/AP, courtesy The Guardian The recent arrest of human rights activists Ruki Fernando and Father Praveen Mahesan under Sri Lanka’s draconian PTA law resulted in widespread condemnation within Sri Lanka and from the international community. As we noted in a previous article, “this is happening when deliberations at the Human Rights Council on Sri Lanka are ...
[Editors note: Read Part 1 of this series Post-war Sri Lanka’s Thought Police: The Rehabilitation of Ex-Combatants and the Denigration of Tamil Identity here] Introduction As mentioned by TSA,[1]the government has prepared a lengthy, heading-less, and inappropriate questionnaire[2] (in poorly written and, at times, incoherent Tamil) which has been used to obtain information about ex-combatants before they leave Protective Accommodation and ...
I spent some time with 12 visual artists and 1 dancer, from Sri Lanka and India, at the Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo today, who are part of an interesting and pioneering artistic collaboration between the two countries, from the 18 – 23 January. The artists work in the open near the hotel’s pool. Anyone from the hotel and ...
Recent web media reports flagged that an 85 year old Kovil was going to be relocated in order to create space for a new parking lot to accommodate vehicles arriving at the President’s official residence in Colombo, Temple Trees. Along with the relocation of the Kovil, eviction orders were given to dozens of laundrymen, many of whom had their ...
Following the assassination of Neelan Tiruchelvam by the LTTE on 29 July 1999, in a spontaneous outpouring of grief and loss, friends and people with whom he worked, including from the institutions he founded, remembered and honoured him by painting peace and floral motifs and the quote ‘Secure the Sanctity of Life’ in Tamil, Sinhala and English on the ...
In recent years, the prevailing image of the Sri Lankan diaspora in the media has been dominated by Tamil community activists’ human rights campaign, calling for investigations into the Sri Lankan Government’s actions in 2009 during the last phases of the 26 year war with the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). However, with estimates of hundreds of thousands ...
Photo courtesy Vikalpa Editors note: Earlier this year, I was asked to give a presentation on the post-war media landscape in Sri Lanka at the 20th World Editors Forum in Bangkok, Thailand. When subsequently put online, the presentation was viewed by thousands. Sri Lanka’s media continues to be at risk. As The Economist on 9th November notes, The press, ...
Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war ended six years ago amidst allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious abuses by both government and rebel forces. In 2011, a U.N. panel concluded that “the conduct of the war by [both sides] represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity.” A ...
Photography by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, via South China Morning Post “I would ask them to stop a moment, to take the time to listen to our time (we had no other one)…” – Jacques Derrida: text delivered at Althusser’s funeral “Human rights, dissidence, antiracism, SOS-this, SOS-that: these are soft, easy, post coitum historicum ideologies, ‘after the orgy’ ideologies for an ...
Both the LinkedIn and Twitter profiles of Harsha Purasinghe note that he is Founder & CEO of Microimage, Microimage Mobile Media and WSO2 Mobile. He is in short a serial technology entrepreneur since the time he was in school, and the story of how his success came about is an interesting one. We begin our conversation around how Microimage ...
Photo courtesy Colombo Gazette A tweet from the government’s official Twitter account around the LLRC National Action Plan noted the following today, #SriLanka has implemented 30% of #LLRC recommendations, @PresRajapaksa tells UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon. @UN_Spokesperson #LKA — LLRC Action (@LLRCAction) May 22, 2014 In February 2014, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister said the following, External Affairs Minister of Sri ...
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. Sharni Jayawardene was commissioned by Groundviews to look at the pogrom from the perspectives ...
Photo courtesy Maithripala Sirisena website “To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.” – ...
