Introducing “Numbers Game” – A Detailed Study of the Last Stages of Eelam War IV

Michael Roberts …. See http://www.scribd.com/doc/132499266/The-Numbers-Game-Politics-of-Retributive-Justice  OR http://www.margasrilanka.org/ [right panel at top—then click]

   Pic from Tamilnet, 1 May 2009  from Tamilnet, 5 May 2009, in Third NFZ  in the extreme south of the final pocket of LTTEresistance

I. PREAMBLE

Presented here is an “Introduction” and pointer to a significant visual and textual study entitled “Numbers Game: The Politics of Retributive Justice,” which scrutinizes both the data and other studies of what happened during the last five months of Eelam War IV. This was the period when a large body of people, almost exclusively Tamil in lineage, was corralled into an increasingly shrinking area by virtue of a strategic/tactical decision by the LTTE leadership. The Tamil Tigers who were now facing imminent defeat, were hoping to use the human mass to engineer a humanitarian catastrophe, thus forcing the international community to act by halting the conflict. This comprehensive survey has been assembled by a collective, the “Independent Diaspora Analysis Group.” The key hand is a person who wishes to remain anonymous and can be called “Citizen Silva.” Born to Sinhalese parents, raised and educated in the West, he has spent the entirety of his life outside the island. This foreign setting has enabled him to build close personal links with the island’s other ethnic diaspora groups, thus shielding him from the communalistic shadows that overwhelm many of his compatriots back home. As the analysis of the satellite imagery reveals, his engineering background allows him to bring to the examination a range of technical skills not usually associated with the average empirical scientist.

Bodu Bala Sena and the global context of Islamophobia

Chandre Dharmawardana

The Bodu-Bala Sena (BBS) is a political movement crystallizing mainly around Sinhala-Buddhist advocates of strong anti-Islamism. The knee-jerk reaction of opportunist political observers is to regard this as an example of a majoritarian populace behaving brutally, after having `caused Sinhala-Tamil terror’ by allegedly provoking the Tamils with ‘Sinhala-only’ discrimination. The BBS has also provided fodder for anti-government critics as well as the usual `I told you so’ liberals who believe that mass movements can be corrected by a little bit of sermonizing by `good monks’ holding vigils around the Lipton circus.

Under Scrutiny: FIRE AND STORM reviewed by Sanderatne

Nimal Sanderatne, courtesy of Groundviews … http://groundviews.org/2013/04/17/review-of-fire-and-storm-by-michael-roberts/

     When Michael Roberts left Peradeniya in the late seventies, he was part of an exodus of intellectuals from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, arguably one of the best universities at that time. The exodus of academics at that time was compelled by the economic difficulties faced by university dons. It was the second wave of such emigration that diminished the intellectual life of the university and country. The Arts Faculty of the University of Peradeniya never regained its prestigious academic status after that. Today the University of Peradeniya cannot take pride in intellectuals of the eminence of E.F.C. Ludowyck, E.R Sarachchandra, H.A.de S. Gunasekera, Fr. Ignatius Pinto, Ian Van den Driesen and many others.

Peacocks in full flight near Mattala

 Courtesy of LALIN Fernando

Life-threats as Possible Prospect for Sri Lankan Cricketers at IPL

Michael Roberts

PART ONE: A gnawing fear resides today in my guts. I fear that one or more of the Sri Lanka cricketers at the IPL matches in India will end up maimed or dead. This is an imminent and distinct possibility – a slim one I admit, but not wholly fanciful.  I earnestly wish I am wrong; but I think that either a lone ranger or a clique of Tamil zealots is quite capable of carrying out such an attack in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi or Calcutta. Security precautions can go only so far. Individual cricketers are highly vulnerable.

Twenty Väddas and Thuppahies deported to Sri Lanka from Australia?

Michael Roberts

At a press conference today in Perth the Immigration Minister, Brendan O’Connor, announced that 20 (twenty) “Sri Lankans” had been placed on a plane and deported back to Sri Lanka. This despatch meant that a total of 963 “Sri Lankans” had been sent back to Sri Lanka since August 2012, for the most part “involunatarily.” This  would,said O’Connor, send a clear message to would-be asylum seekers and people smugglers. It would save people from “dangerous journeys.”

None of the media personnel asked O’Connor for an ethnic breakdown of the 20 or 963 deportees or questioned the premise of inevitably dangerous voyages. So much for acumet and background nous. For my part speaking as a Thuppahi [mongrel], I wondered if all TWENTY were either Väddas orThuppahi. That would please me no end. Sri Lanka needs more thuppahi in order to reduce the scourge of Sinhala extremism and Tamil extremism. The pukka Burghers  left long ago so that problem no longer exists as a major force.

Anticipated but avoidable extremisms, machinations, failures

Kalana Senaratne in The Island, 27 March 2013 where the title is “Geneva and Bodu Bala Sena: Two Dimensions of a Crisis“

There are tensions and schisms erupting, there is a crisis in the making. One dimension of this crisis is the unfolding diplomatic debacle: the Geneva-crisis. The group Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) represents, and gives expression to, another dimension. The emergence of both was to be expected; both, however, were avoidable.

Geneva-crisis: After Sri Lanka’s sui generis performance in 2009, the Geneva-story has been a depressing one to a lot of people. Sri Lanka’s support-base has dwindled drastically. India which, in 2009, opposed a Western-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka stood up to remind the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillai, where to get off. Today, India is endorsing Western or US-sponsored resolutions, and acknowledging in the process reports produced by Ms. Pillai. The contrast couldn’t have been more damaging than this.

A Paper Tiger? Sri Lanka and the UNHRC Resolution

Jegan Jeganaathan, courtesy of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies …… http://www.ipcs.org/

The 22nd regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has successfully adopted a US-sponsored Resolution on “Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka” by a vote of 25 in favour, 13 against and 8 abstentions. India voted in favour of the resolution for the second consecutive time.  However, India’s vote either in favour or against will hardly make any difference to the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils as the resolution will neither bind nor bite the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) on accountability to war crimes allegedly committed during the final phase of the war. Nevertheless, it had a ripple effect in Indian domestic politics when the DMK finally pulled out its support to the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA).  This article will critically appraise the spirit and letter of the resolution and the impact of India’s vote in favour of the resolution on Indo-Sri Lankan relations as well as its domestic constituency.

Racism and Irrationality as Bedfellows: The Halal Issue and Sinhala Buddhist Extremists

Izeth Hussain, in The Island, 16 March 2013

Gnanasara Thero of the Bodu Bala Sena declaims –Pic by Daminda Harsha Perera

It is questionable whether there are today any purely internal problems, serious internal problems, without any external dimension to them at all. It is true that governments frequently try to explain away internal problems, for which they alone are responsible, by alleging foreign interference. It is true also that there is the human propensity to indulge in conspiracy theories. In certain situations of stress people can become paranoid and imagine that sinister foreign forces are at work behind practically every serious problem. While all that is true, it is also true that in today’s highly interdependent world foreign interference takes place on a scale never before known in human history.

Sinhalaness and its Reproduction, 1232-1818

 Michael Roberts reproduced from Asanga Welikala (ed.) The Sri Lankan Republic at Forty: Reflections on Constitutional History, Theory and Practice, Colombo, Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2012, Volume I, pp. 253-87………….. ISBN 078-955-1655-93-8

I address the issue of Sinhala identity over time[1] with a focus on the period 1232-1818, the middle period as I shall call it in order to escape from European periodization. This periodization begins with the decline of the Polonnaruva civilisation and the shift of the principal Sinhala kingdoms to the hill country and south west; and ends, quite deliberately, with what has usually been termed (misleadingly) as “the Kandyan Rebellion” of 1817-18.[2] Within this broad span of time the emphasis is on the period 1400-1818. The analysis has an eye on the subsequent re-working of the Sinhala sentiments displayed in the rebellion during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a result of the processes of capitalist transformation and modernization in a world era marked by the consolidation of nation-states.

Addressing such a large span of time involving a substantial scholarly literature which has had to cope with mere fragments of source material for certain stages and localities poses a methodological problem of generalization. Conclusions must necessarily be cautious and suggestive. The definitive hues permeating some statements that follow are subject to this preliminary caveat.