Elephantine Frolics at Yala

    What FUN !

 SEE no Fun! Smell no Fun !    What a Folly!

Terrific PICs by Willy Thuan — Courtesy of a Fanatic Chain-Mailer

LTTE Roots in Tamilnadu

A. Subburaj of TNN in Times of India, 28 November 2012, where the title reads ” For Puliyoor Resdents, LTTE is Living Presence“

COIMBATORE: On Tuesday late evening, over 400 people including 100 women and children, gathered at Puliyoor, a nondescript village in Salem district, and lit candles to remember the fallen heroes of a war fought across the seas.  The  LTTE has been wiped out from Sri Lanka, but the Tigers are a living presence for the villagers here. At Ponnammaan Memorial Bus Shelter at Puliyoor Pirivu here, men, women and children from Puliyoor, Mettur Dam, Kolathur and surrounding villages stood in a line, with candles in hand, as they have been doing for the past 21 years, to remember Tamils who died fighting  Sri Lankan army during the three decades of ethnic strife. They sang songs in praise of the heroes and for the Eelam.

Reflecting on the LTTE Crimes in the North-East

Noel Nadesan, in the Daily News, 17 & 18 October 2012**

After my recent visit to Mullativu I came away with the distinct feeling that the Tamil leadership is playing the same old game of the three proverbial monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. As usual they are playing the same old game of pointing the finger at the others with the sole objective of trying to pass the buck to others. The latest victim in the blame game is Erik Solheim. No other figure in the international community went out of their way to defend the Tamils better than Solheim.

The LLRC and the Encirclement of Sri Lanka

Kumar Rupesinghe, courtesy of Asian Tribune

The much abused word “civil society” must be deeply engaged in the reconciliation process. Civil Society, is not the handful of NGO”s financed by external funds, but the large and varied numbers of organizations such as trade unions, women’s organizations, the business community, the professionals, to name a few. As a first step the LLRC must be translated into all three languages and widely distributed.. Civil society must engage with the Lalith Weeratunge Commission, to improve and add quality to the implementation plan, and show ways and means of creatively expanding the reconciliation process. After all, much of the work will be done on the ground, amongst and within communities, and they must be brought into the process through a process of widespread consultations. There are many examples internationally, such as the process developed by South Africa, to name just one country which transformed a deeply divided society to one where all stakeholders were involved in the process of reconciliation. There are many such examples which we must study.

From ‘Immolation’ to my Epitaph for Neelan Tiruchelvam

Michael Roberts … This article was originally printed in the Lanka Monthly Digest, September 1999, vol 6:2, pp. 56-57. It was then expanded significantly in some places, while citations and footnotes were added, for its re-printing within the book Fire and Storm. Essays in Sri Lankan Politics, Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2011, pp. 123-30 – ISBN 978-955665–134-8.

I: In February 1999 a Kurdish nationalist leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was caught by the Turkish authorities. Kurdish refugees in the Western world erupted in protest. In London a young girl Neila Kanteper set herself alight. In Sydney a young lad was caught on camera with petrol can and cigarette lighter as he threatened similar action. As I walked into the local news-agency in Adelaide that week the proprietor[1] waved the picture of Kanteper in flames in front of me and in considerable alarm inquired how anyone could take such an extreme measure. He could not ever take such a step, he said. His remarks gain in significance from the fact that they were unsolicited and had not been preceded by prior conversation. I was in a hurry and did not explore matters further, but I conjecture that his bewilderment stemmed not only from the method of death by fire, but also from such terminal commitment to a collective cause. The question, therefore, is whether in similar circumstances an act of martyrdom involving death by hand-gun would produce the same level of astonishment. Relatively speaking, death by gun seems to be so much more acceptable to the Western world than death by flame.

Humanising International Relations amidst Realpolitik

Jayantha Dhanapala, in The Island, 7 August 2012 **

My subject has been given to me by the Fulbright Commission but I tweaked it by adding the bit about ‘Realpolitik’ because I do feel, as Chris Teal, the Chairman of the Fulbright Commission has told you, that the humanist aspect in international relations has gradually encroached upon realpolitik but the hard core of realpolitik remains there.

Let me begin by saying that 2012 appears to be the Year of Diamond Jubilees. We had the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen of England which has, of course, been highly publicised. We had the Diamond Jubilee of the University of Peradeniya where Tissa and I went to University and many of us have very nostalgic memories of that university and, of course, today we celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of the Fulbright Commission in Sri Lanka. I have not been so academically gifted as to be a Fulbright grantee or recipient, but as a diplomatic representative of the Sri Lanka Government in Washington twice – as the First Secretary in the 70s and, subsequently, as an Ambassador in the 90s – I do recall the important role that the Fulbright Commission and Fulbright scholars, both Sri Lankan scholars in the U.S. and the U.S. scholars here, have played in enriching the U.S.–Sri Lanka relationship.

Remembering Neelan Tiruchelvam’s intellectual Legacy

Asanga Welikala, courtesy of the Sunday Island, 22 July 2012

Sunday 29^th July 2012 is the thirteenth death anniversary of Dr Neelan Tiruchelvam, which will be commemorated, as is now customary, with the annual Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture. An old friend, Professor Sujit Choudhry of the New York University School of Law, will deliver the lecture this year. I have been asked to write a few words of remembrance and reflection to mark the occasion, an invitation I take up here with both pleasure and sadness, as well as a measure of trepidation.

Kim Phuc recovers her poise from the scars of war …. as a Vietnamese Canadian

In this iconic June 8th 1972 photo, children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places as South Vietnamese forces from the 25th Division walk behind them. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. From left, the children are Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim’s cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. (AP Photo/Nick Ut).

Margie Mason of Associated Press, an article  which  has appeared under various title including “Iconic ‘napalm girl’ photo that shocked the world turns 40″

In the picture, the girl will always be 9 years old and wailing “Too hot! Too hot!” as she runs down the road away from her burning Vietnamese village. She will always be naked after blobs of sticky napalm melted through her clothes and layers of skin like jellied lava.

Misreading and Distorting the Sri Lankan War, 2009-2012

Michael Roberts 25 May 2012

The recent UNHRC resolution sponsored by USA and directed at the government of Sri Lanka was the culmination of a campaign that began during the last stages of Eelam War IV. Since 2010 articulate circles in the West have been convinced that there had been “40,000 civilian deaths” during this phase. In contrast Rohan Gunaratna asserted that there were 1400 civilian deaths, of which 200 were inflicted by the LTTE. Both calculations are erroneous. Estimates provided by three moderate Tamils who have had regular access to the Tamil personnel who were on the ground indicate that the death toll, inclusive of Tamil Tiger personnel, was in the range 10,000 to 16,000, in circumstances where it was impossible to differentiate in all cases between those Tiger, those recently conscripted as auxiliaries and those truly civilian.

 Tamils streaming across Nandikadal Lagoon probably late April–Pic by AFP

It is towards the clarification of these specific circumstances and a criticism of the claims presented by a variety of human rights agencies, moral crusaders and media engines that this essay is directed. The campaign has been sustained by a mixture of lies and half-truths amidst truths, compounded further by a wilful blindness to the manner in which the LTTE utilised the Tamil populace in its domain as labour pool, protective shield and bargaining chip meant to induce a ”humanitarian intervention.” The massaging of death toll figures, therefore, is just one facet of a massive propaganda heist.

‘Niromi de Soyza’s’ first excursion into the media limelight in May 2009

Drew Warne-Smith, in the Weekend Australian, 23 May 2009 under title “ Cause remains for Tamil Tiger in our midst” … see Web Editor’s Addendum at end

 LTTE security check-point, late 1980s -Pic by Shyam Tekwani

THE guns have been silenced and peace has returned to her homeland, but the celebrations have been muted this week for Sri Lankan expatriate Niromi de Soyza. The Sydney mother of two was once a member of the Tamil Tigers, the feared guerilla insurgency that has finally been crushed after a bloody 37-year campaign to create an independent Tamil state. Trained in combat and armed with a rifle and cyanide capsules, de Soyza took the fight to Sri Lanka’s military for a year in the jungles of Vanni and the Jaffna Peninsula.

It was, she maintains, a “quest for equality”; the defence of the Tamil minority against an oppressive Sinhalese government that had discriminated against them for too long. But while she still believes in the cause, de Soyza now disavows the violence and suicide bombings that resulted in 70,000 deaths since the civil war began.