Columbage summs up for The Huffington Post

Dinouk Colombage in
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dinouk-colombage/sri-lanka-forgetting-to-r_b_3459138.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

In the light of triumph the mistakes of the past are often thrown in to the shadows to be forgotten. For Sri Lanka this bodes true, as the government continues to bathe in the “glory” of its defeat of the LTTE back in 2009. Four years have passed since Sri Lanka’s brutal and bloody civil war came to an aggressive end. At the time many rejoiced with the news, and expectations that after 26 years the country could reconcile. It now appears as though reconciliation is playing second fiddle to the growing political intrigue on all sides.

Dayan sums up the State of 13th Amendment PLAY for THE HINDU

Courtesy of The Hindu

A political battle of major proportions, perhaps the most portentous in years, is looming in Sri Lanka this year and is being preceded by a debate amounting to a battle of ideas. The matter at hand is the much delayed and deferred election to the Northern Provincial Council.

Political forces are arrayed in four positions on the battlefield. On the Tamil side there are those who hold that the existing 13th Amendment to the Constitution under which the Northern Provincial Council was established, was inadequate from the start and that therefore, contesting the election and holding office would be of no positive consequence, and may even have the negative consequence of legitimising the institution. The other position occupied within the Tamil political spectrum is of those who regard the 13th Amendment to be flawed and deeply unsatisfactory, but grasp the value of contesting and winning the election, and occupying the political real estate that remains.

Architecture and Nationalism in Sri Lanka: The Trouser under the Cloth

Anoma Pieris

Abstract: The role of the home, the domestic sphere and the intimate, ethno-cultural identities that are cultivated within it, are critical to understanding the polemical constructions of country and city; tradition and modernity; and regionalism and cosmopolitanism. The home is fundamental to ideas of the homeland that give nationalism its imaginative form and its political trajectory.

Creeping Totalitarianism? Eran Wickramaratne speaks out against Government Moves on Press Ethics

Eran Wickramaratne

The reactivation, of the Press Council Law and the government-proposed Code of Ethics for journalists have to be viewed with great suspicion for many reasons.  Ethics is beyond the realm of legal codification. Ethics is about moral principles that govern a person or a group’s behaviour. While some philosophers suggested that it should exemplify justice and charity, and benefit the person and society, others later introduced the idea that ethics entrains one’s duty towards others and respect for others. The attempt to encourage better ethics or behaviour amongst journalists, while being laudable cannot become coercive.  Attempts to legalise ethical systems have been made by religious orders from time to time the world over empowering clergy to become the ethical police.  Such systems have universally failed.  A Code of Ethics for the media imposed by a government will of necessity make the relevant government ministry the ethical police.  The recent Island newspaper editorial made the point “There is no difference in our book, between politicians extolling the virtues of ethics and prostitutes pontificating on chastity.”

To meddle or NOT to meddle? The 13th Amendment in the Gunsights

ONE: Kumar David: “Racists abhor breathing space for Tamils: Constitutional panic and proposals,” …. Sunday Island, June 15, 2013, 6:53 pm
There’s no need to hold the punches, let’s say it straight. Vermin who gladly enjoyed and exploited the Provincial Council system for 25 years, JHU, JVP, SLFP and an assortment of Councils included, are now up in arms at the thought of Tamils in the Northern Province having an elected council of their own for the first time since 13A was enacted! What is the mental makeup of these rats? I do not hold back in declaring them racists. If you belong in this bunch of bigots that want to deprive the NPC of rights other PCs enjoyed for a quarter century, well you now know what I think of you. I hope it makes your distilled chauvinist blood boil to hear me reckon that one reason may be that you fear a Tamil led PC (led by TNA, Douglas or anyone else) could achieve more than the other eight!

Usha S-S boxed in from All Sides: A Singular Tamil Spokesperson

Padraig Colman, in the Sunday Island, where the title is “Who speaks for Sri Lanka’s Tamils?”

 Pic from Ministry of Defence

An article I posted on Groundviews on May 28 elicited many responses –
http://groundviews.org/2013/05/28/sri-lankas-numbers-game/
On May 16, a seminar was held at the Marga Institute to launch a publication by the Independent Diaspora Analysis Group – Sri Lanka (IDAG-S) – The Numbers Game: Politics of Restorative Justice —

Dr Godfrey Gunatilleke, Chairman Emeritus of the Marga Institute, opened the proceedings by answering the question: “Do numbers matter”. He acknowledged that, while even a low number of civilian casualties was cause for anguish, citing large and inaccurate figures could only inhibit the healing process.

Neither Tiger nor Lion: A Suffering Tamil Voice of Reason from Diaspora Land

A  Tamil in UK who must remain Anonymous … responding to Tamil nationalist commemorations of the Tiger and Tamil dead  and to a photograph by Robert Pinney [see below] depicting this event in mid-May 2013**

It really bothers me that the protest of ‘Tamils… gathered around photographs of those killed during the Sri Lankan civil war’ is being symbolized by people carrying the LTTE flag.  Anyone who protests that massacres of Tamils in 2009 should by no means do so under the Tiger flag. In 2009, the Tigers forced innocent Tamil civilians to remain in the Vanni – under pain of death. When I was working in the Vanni, I began to truly sympathize with the Tamils who stayed behind in Sri Lanka. They lost EVERYTHING under the Tigers and the GOSL      A shed with garlanded photographs of maaveerar, Batticaloa locality, c. 2004

Pragmatic Action & Enchanted Worlds: A Black Tiger Rite of Commemoration

Michael Roberts,   … a reprint of an article in Social Analysis,  Volume 50, Issue 1, Spring 2006, 73–102. **

The de facto LTTE state in Sri Lanka has established a number of calendrical rituals to honour and remember its fallen heroes and heroines, the māvīrar. These are the personnel who have died in battle or fallen as part of the LTTE goal of political independence, namely, Thamilīlam or Eelam as the latter is more widely labelled. The most significant of these moments is Heroes Day on 27 November when their ­talaivar, or “Leader,” Velupillai Prabhākaran (more properly Pirapakaran) also delivers a peroration for 25 minutes immediately prior to the lighting of the flame of sacrifice at 6.06 p.m. at the designated tuyilam illam (resting places) for the māvīrar.[1] As Chritiana Natali discovered (2005) the Tamil people do not see these sites as “cemeteries.” Rather they are “portrayed as temples.” Binded, like the people she talked to, a demi-official LTTE site described the locations as “holy places.”[2]

Language and National Identity: The Sinhalese and Others over the Centuries

Michael Roberts, reprinting an article published in 2003 in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Summer 2003, 9: 75-102.**

 ABSTRACT: The collective identity of Sinhala-speakers over four centuries dating from the 1590s is analyzed with due attention to the structural form of (a) the Kingdom of Kandy and (b) the British colonial regime that took control of the whole island by 1815/18. The analysis dwells on the modes of oral, visual-iconic and written forms of cultural transmission that pre-dated print technology, while drawing attention to the relative uniformity of the Sinhala language in both geographical and temporal scale. A semantic pattern of political alliances based on the opposition of inside to outside which works contextually like a nestling Chinese-box is one dimension of this linguistic order. This supported the tendency of Sinhalese representations to adopt an associational logic which merged past enemies (the wicked Tamils) with contemporary enemies (the Portuguese, the English) during the liberation struggles of the Kandyan state and its militia in the pre-1818 period. Such tendencies and the continuation of disparaging epithets coined during the period of Portuguese imperial intrusion into the vocabulary of the twentieth century must inform any theoretical efforts to distinguish the collective consciousness of the Sinhalese after the substantial transformations initiated under the British from that which is expressed so powerfully in the war poems of the pre-British period.

A Story of Southern Sinhala Recalcitrance: How the Devolution Gestures of 1981-83 moved NOWHERE

S. Sivathasan in the Sunday Leader,13 May 2013

When the Jaffna Development Council started functioning a Minister who made frequent official visits to Jaffna was Hon. Gamini Dissanayake. His known closeness to the President lent some significance to the discussions he had with Mr. Nadarajah the Chairman of the Council. A warm rapport developed between the two. To the Chairman it opened a two-way communication connecting the District with the Centre. The Minister perhaps was not unaware of the political fall-out for the government, if things turned out well.

Quite a few meetings with the Minister were held in Colombo. The Chairman, the Government Agent Dr. Nesiah and the writer participated in these meetings. What were emphasized from the Council’s side were substantially larger funding and more devolved powers to utilize the finances effectively. The proposition struck a sensitive chord with the Minister and he took the initiative in arranging for a meeting with President J.R. Jayawardene one evening at his residence. It was in the latter part of 1982. The five of us took part in the discussions for over an hour. Development priorities with central funding were outlined by us. The Jaffna Lagoon Scheme and bridging the Mahadeva Causeway were among them. There was responsive interaction.