HL praises Galkande Dhammananda’s Message and places it in our historical context

HL Seneviratne, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph where this esays attracts several commendations: see http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/venerable-voices-stirrings-of-a-sleeping-conscience/

In the 1930s and ‘40s educated urban Buddhist monks launched a movement of rural development, proclaiming that their work is not ritual but “social service”. They achieved some successes in the early period of their work, but by the mid-1940s this largely social and economic movement had deteriorated into a majoritarian political movement that identified the island with Buddhism and the Sinhala ethnic group, thereby marginalizing the minorities. Thus, while these monks talked about social service, their actions were devoid of a social conscience. With the assassination of Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike by a Buddhist monk, their vociferous support of the ethnic war while obstructing attempts at a negotiated settlement, and most recently, the attacks on Muslims in Dambulla and Pepiliyana led by them, the image of the “political monk” has been severely tarnished. The ochre robed monk, the messenger of the world’s most peaceful religion and symbol of tranquility and compassion, has become the symbol of violence and intolerance.

Lone Cell Assaults: From Boston to Westmead-in-Sydney to the Unabomber. Inspirations and Enabling Conditions in Comparative Perspective **

Michael Roberts, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph where the title is slightly different: http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/lone-wolf-assaults-from-boston-to-westmead-home-invasion-to-the-unabomber/

The recent bomb outrage in Boston has sent tidal ripples along the media networks around the world.  It appears that the bombs were hidden in pressure cookers packed with nails/ball bearings and put in backpacks which were placed on the pavement among onlookers. “Similar easy-to-make roadside bombs are used in Iraq and Afghanistan” (Stewart 2013). But such bomb-making techniques are also clarified on internet sites. Among the first readings one headline in The Australian said: “Stamp of lone wolf more than al-Qa’ida” (Maley 2013). The contention here was that “in recent years, so-called “lone wolf” attackers — people who acquire radical ideology and weapons skills online — have become the greatest concern for counter-terrorism officials, who have virtually no way of detecting the activities of these people” (Stewart 2013).The absence of “chatter” on internet among jihadi circles after the event is one reason for this suspicion.  suspected bomb pack

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.

Standing UP against Extremism and the BBS: One Voice … “I am just plain tired”

“I am just plain tired” by An Ordinary Citizen in Groundviews

 Pic from Groundviews

This evening (Friday, April 12^th 2013) around 7.15pm on Havelock Road in front of the Sambuddhatva Jayanthi Building adjoining Lauries Road, I was reminded anew that there is no freedom in our land. I am nearly 45 years old now, and for 30 long years, I have been reminded over and over again in different places, at different times that in many ways the citizens of Sri Lanka are trapped. We have been and still are, in fact increasingly so, trapped by our fear, our intolerance, our ignorance, our sheep like obedience, either to the powers that be or to our own desperate need to play safe and stay safe.

I am not a lawyer, a journalist, an academic or an activist. I am just an ordinary citizen who is sick of being intimidated by the forces that are empowered by us to protect us. I am tired of our short sighted, nepotistic governments, our corrupt politicians, our arrogant law enforcement officers, our extremist religious leaders, and our ignorant, complacent citizenry. I am just plain tired.

This evening I walked onto Havelock Road with my husband and two children to join my sister, her husband and some friends in gathering with the many who had come to symbolically light a candle in the darkness of our land, to protest through a silent vigil, the extremist politics of the now notorious Bodu Bala Sena who were at that moment in a meeting at their headquarters in the Sambuddhatva Jayanthi Building. I was almost immediately flung into a flurry of aggressive policemen, chasing us off, shouting at us to get rid of our candles, threatening us with arrest if we did not immediately obey and disperse! Across the street two Bhikkhus were shouting and inciting the Police. Some thugs appeared to be with them, yelling and gesturing wildly at us all. We were stunned. We had expected police and Bhikkhus, but not hatred; not violence; not such flagrant abuse of power, of position.

 Pics courtesy of Nation

In a minute my sister received a call from her husband, still across the street near the petrol shed. He had been arrested for standing there holding a candle in his hand! He had just walked up Lauries Road and joined the crowd. Before he could figure out what was happening, he was in the jeep with a couple of others. No one would listen to him. They took him to the Bambalapitiya Police Station. An hour later he was released, but not before my husband was accused by a Policeman whom he went to talk to regarding my brother in law’s arrest, of being, because of his rather confusing name, wait for it – a Muslim!

At one time being Tamil was pretty unsafe to say the least, now it is being Muslim! Others who had come earlier for the vigil had already been dispersed, threatened, a few arrested and later released. I am terribly sad, angry, above all tired. My dear fellow citizens, if you have not realized this already, let me tell you, democracy is dead in our land.

My children, 10 and 15 were with me. We live nearby, it was a lovely evening, a candlelight peace vigil, and we thought it would be safe. We were wrong. My son was afraid. My teenage daughter bemused. They asked if we should migrate! I remember being 15 in 1983. A year later everyone around me migrated to Canada or elsewhere. We didn’t. My dad said this was our country, we could not, would not, be chased away. Only rats leave a sinking ship he said. He didn’t mean those who had been affected by the riots, only those who took advantage of the moment to seek greener pastures. I thought he was too harsh in his estimate. I still think he was.

We were fortunate; our Sinhalese neighbours’ protected us and kept us from being burnt. Others were not so lucky. Fear was everywhere. Many felt displaced, dispossessed. Were they Sri Lankan they wondered? Did they belong? So they left. Who can blame them? But I have never forgotten my father’s words. I understood what he meant. He meant, don’t run away when the going gets tough, stay and fight. He meant find a way to give to this land so that it will progress and prosper. He meant be proud to be Sri Lankan: In spite of everything, we are a good and able people.

But today Daddy, I wondered if you were right at all. The war is over. Though I don’t believe the means justified the end, I am glad it is over. I feel safe. I don’t wake up wondering if my children will come home from school today. I don’t hear a car backfire or hear a cracker go off and think ‘Dear God, another bomb!’ Well, almost I don’t. Peace takes getting used to for those of us who have spent most of our lives in a battle scarred land!

But there are signs of peace all around us or so we are told. Roads are being built, new ports and airports, cricket stadiums, shopping malls, the works! Never mind the land grabbing and homelessness in the North; never mind the water holes being filled to keep the errant wild animals away in the South. Forget the politicisation of sports; the skirmishes caused by ministers’ sons’, the biased, state controlled media and judiciary; forget the cost of living, the petrol prices, the electricity tariffs, disease causing garbage dumps being forcibly filled under Police cover amidst protests by the community; the incredible increase in rape and abuse, a testament to the lawlessness in the land. Forget it all. The war is over. We’ll forgive our government anything.

Harassment of Muslims?  Well they should really be more careful. After all this is not really their land right? Intimidation by Police? Just doing their jobs men! They have to keep the peace even if it takes force! The Bodu Bala Sena?  Oh just harmless Bhikkhus. Ignore them. This is all just media hype! State sponsored violence? So paranoid! They saved us from the terrorists remember? Give them time. Watch them take us forward. Just give them… time.

We are sheep. What do we have in common with New Zealand? There too sheep outnumber humans! Yet people came to protest today. Not many, but we came. We were dispersed aggressively. Never mind. We saw firsthand that the Bodu Bala Sena is backed by the forces which are controlled by the State. We saw truth. Oh, we have known it all along. But today it could not be denied. Our government is behind terror. It is behind extremist Buddhist chauvinism. It needs another cause to keep our people fear ridden, to condone military presence. This is how dictatorships are built.

The story goes a teacher once asked his students, ‘what is a democracy?’ and the reply: ‘a democracy is the freedom to elect our own dictators!’ This of course is what we’ve done. But who was it who said ‘you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.’ Ah, yes, Abraham Lincoln. So sheep no more! There are amongst us people who are good and able. Unafraid. So perhaps you were right Daddy. People came today. People who will stay and fight. The Police and the Bhikkhus made a mistake. They forgot that not all are always afraid. Sometimes aggression fuels the fire of protest. May it be so. May more of us ordinary, everyday citizens, rise up and protest. Forget our past? Forgive our governments? Give them time? No bl–dy way!

SCT – an ordinary citizen (A Personal Response to the quashing of the first anti BBS protest on Havelock Road)

                      *****

 BBS thugs abusing “NGO kaarayo– Courtesy of Nation

ALSO SEE Thrishantha Nanyakkara: “An Open Message to Gotabaya Rajapaksa,” http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/an-open-message-to-gotabaya-rajapaksa/ 

COMPARE … Malinda Seneviratne: “The BBS ‘Buddhists’, ‘Nightclub Buddhists’ And The ‘Vigil’ That I Saw,” http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/the-bbs-buddhists-nightclub-buddhists-and-the-vigil-that-i-saw/…….NOTE the vibrant and tetchy blog debate around this essay.

ALSO SEE “Hate has no place in Lanka,” — http://www.dailymirror.lk/caption-story/28688-hate-has-no-place-in-lanka.html

The Middle Path by Arundathi Kurukulasuriya … has been deleted at her e request.

For All Sri Lankans: A Message of Tolerance and Conflict Resolution from Ven Galkande Dhammananda

Courtesy of COLOMBO TELEGRAPH — SEE http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/a-sri-lankan-buddhist-monk-speaks-out-let-sri-lanka-have-thousands-of-buddha-putras-like-him/ … and also absorb the blog comments it draws. NOTE: the sinhala is precise and lucid if high-flown. Indeed, it is a lesson in concise clarity. AND it is translated intoTamil and English as well. a MUST SEE and must listen –both media.

A Note from Dr WA Wijewardena: “It is indeed heartening to see an erudite Buddhist priest speaking out, guided by the teaching of the Master, when many have chosen to remain silent. Ven Dhammananda, Lecturer at the University of Kelaniya, speaks through his experience, but has not been angered or being revengeful despite the personal loss to him. Let Sri Lanka have thousands of Buddha Putras like him to guide this nation, which is now stranded and moving aimlessly, to its future glory!” says a former Deputy Governor – Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Dr. W.A. Wijewardena.

Migrant Remittances drive “Asylum-Seeker” Out-Migration from Sri Lanka

Dinoo Kelleghan in The Weekend-Australian, 13 April 2013 where the title is Tamils flee for cash, not from harm … Dinoo Kelleghan is a former foreign editor of The Australian and was a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal from 1997-2004.

IN contrast to the weary boatloads of Sri Lankans making the dangerous asylum-shopping trip to Australia, millions of different shoppers are out in force here as the island prepares for Sinhala and Tamil New Year celebrations this weekend. This year, economists noted a change in the spending patterns – lower-income people are spending more freely than the better-paid shoppers in the capital, Colombo. The reason? The gushing torrents of remittances home from Sri Lankans who have gone abroad for employment, often making empty claims of persecution to leapfrog others who stand patiently in long queues outside Western embassies in Colombo to get a work visa.

Niromi De Soyza’s Message to the Australians at Adelaide Writers’ Week

 Presented on 20 March 2013 — SEE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9uWKa5YfKQ

Thuppahi was led to this presentation of self by”Niromi” by a blog comment inserted in its ‘leaves.’ This was in the SECTION on “BOOK REVIEWS” rather than the initial review of Tamil Tigress by myself on 21 August 2011. I was on holiday when the Writers’ Week event took place, but those present at one of Subothini Mariatta Anandarajah, alias Niromi’s, presentations said that she shed tears on stage. Those present at two other events in Sydney and Melbourne also indicated that she burst into tears. The implications of this fact remain open to differing interpretations; but must enter everyone’s reading. As significantly, DBS Jeyaraj one of her erstwhile defenders, did not produce his fifth article as promised. In any event, apart from the different versions of the book the world is being presented with (see Bala’s comments) Subothini Anandarajah has shifted her stance and told her [silent] interviewer at Adelaide that she was confronted with the “enemy” when she functioned as  a female Tigress guerilla. But the first book’s back cover blurb speaks of her encounter with “government troops” during that first awful (because her bosom pal died) skirmish in December 1987 . Elsewhere in the book and in interviews she refers to encounters with both Indian and government troops. Again, one has to compare her initial 2009 newspaper account with the stories later. Unfortunately I was only led to the 2009 story AFTER I had written my initial essays.  The discrepancies are quite outstanding. Alas, readers seem to be guided by whether one is a good Tamil-for-the -Tamil-cause or a bad Tamil or a bad non-Tamil. Brand someone a government apologist and thereafter whatever  s/he says becomes unacceptable. Even women indulge in this tactic of playing the man not the ball.  Cheap tactics, simpleton minds! BALA  is a refreshing change [assuming he is truly a Bala].

Spare a moment’s reflection,too, for the Australian journalists and publishers who lap all this up without asking searching questions! Nikki Barraclough in Sydney reacted immediately when I first contacted her and sent the initial questioning of the book. She was on a flying visit abroad and said she would get back to me. Well, nothing followed. Likewise one of the book distributors in Melbourne who was organising a forum and inquired if I was available.When I said I would be severely critical and would not be a good choice, there was surprise expressed and I was not contacted again –no surprise that.         

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.

The Politics of the Sri Lankan Tamil Cause in Tamil Nadu: A critical view from across the waters

Anonymous in http://kafila.org/2013/04/01/of-imagined-solidarities-and-real-fears-the-politics-of-the-sri-lankan-tamil-cause-in-tamil-nadu-a-critical-view-from-across-the-waters-by-anonymous/

When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers, so goes an old Kenyan proverb. In the maelstrom of political hysteria unleashed by Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi ostensibly in aid of Sri Lankan Tamils, democracy, truth and solidarity have been the biggest casualties. Over the past few months, Tamil Nadu has witnessed attacks on Sri Lankan Buddhist monks and Christian pilgrims, and the government sanctioned blockade of Sri Lankan schoolchildren and sportspersons.

The latest salvo from Chennai regarding Sri Lanka is the Tamil Nadu assembly resolution calling upon India to press for a United Nations Security Council mandated referendum amongst Tamils living in Sri Lanka as well as Tamils of Sri Lankan origin in other countries on the question of carving out an independent Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. This is in addition to demands to declare Sri Lanka a ‘hostile state’, impose some form of sanctions etc.

However, is this the ‘solidarity’ and ‘support’ Tamils in Sri Lanka, in whose name all this is being done, really want and will gain from? On doing so, in Sri Lanka at least, one would find many different and perhaps even some conflicting answers. For example, the fishing community in Sri Lanka’s north and west, around Jaffna and Mannar will tell you just the kind of solidarity they would really appreciate—stop those large Indian trawlers from regularly raiding the Palk Bay deep in Sri Lanka damaging the area’s marine ecology and the livelihoods of Sri Lankan Tamil fishing communities. Yes, the Sri Lankan Navy has attacked Indian fisherfolk on many occasions but along the Jaffna and Mannar coasts there is actually a perception that the Sri Lankan Navy is not policing the maritime boundary strongly enough.

Virulent Shameless People! Cry OUR Beloved Country!

David Blacker … courtesy of http://blacklightarrow.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/our-moment-of-destiny/ where the title is “Our Moment of Destiny”

 Gnanasara Thera of BBS in full flow

I think every generation faces its own particular challenges; but the greatest and most defining ones are those of morality and courage. That moment, if missed, condemns that generation — and often many that follow — to a world far more unpleasant and evil than we would wish it to be. For many in the free world of the late 1930s, that moment came with the invasion of Poland and the bombing of Pearl Harbour. It was a moment when my grandfather’s generation had to decide if they would simply stand on the sidelines or go out and fight someone else’s cause. Fortunately for them, the choice was easy; their respective governments took the right fork, and millions of young men — my grandfather included — went out into the deserts, the jungles, and across the seas to ensure that tyranny and racism would not shape our world. For 1960s America, the moment of destiny was in fact a place — Vietnam — and a moral choice. America made its decision, albeit a little late for millions of Vietnamese.