Amarasingham’s Study of Sri Lankan Tamil Activism in Canada

 

Pain, Pride, and Politics: Social Movement Activism and the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora in Canada …. As a product of Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Series) Paperback – September 15, 2015

SL Army enshrine a New Statue at a Mass in Madu

A News Item, April 2019 …. https://www.army.lk/news/wanni-army-troops-consecrate-holy-madu-shrine-attend-special-mass-commander

Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake, Commander of the Army on Thursday (11) morning had the rare privilege of offering a new statue of Our Lady of Madu to the most sacred Holy Madu Shrine in Mannar during a Special Mass and simultaneously consecrating the statue in an Army-built pedestal, adjoining the main Shrine premises.

The day’s sequence of proceedings began with the carriage of the newly-carved Holy Statue of Our Lady of Madu by Army personnel in a motorcade before it was blessed in a Special Mass inside the main Shrine after Most Reverend Dr Emmanuel Fernando, Bishop of Mannar and Reverend Father Peppi Sosai, Administrator at Madu Shrine received the statue for consecration and invocation of blessings.

Gotabaya remains Upbeat and in Fighting Mood

Hassina Leelarathna in Los Angeles, writing for  DAILY FT, 12 April 2019, where the title reads “Gota fires back against lawsuits”

Former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa has dismissed the two lawsuits filed against him as baseless and insisted that they would only motivate him and his supporters to push for political change in Sri Lanka. “These lawsuits have been filed to delay the process and discourage me. I have handed the matter to my lawyers [in Los Angeles] to take care of and I’m looking ahead to what needs to be done for our country,” said Rajapaksa, commenting on the two civil lawsuits filed against him in the Central District of California.

Gotabaya in Legal Gunsights: One, Two, Three …

ONE = Sanjana Hattotuwa: “The Candidate,” in Island, April 2019,

“The lie is revealed. There was no summons served. The photo depicts a lookalike of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The FBI is engaged in an effort to ascertain who produced this false information”. The Facebook Page with this content originally in Sinhala also featured a screenshot of a news story from a leading private electronic media institution. This TV channel, with pages on Facebook in both Sinhala and English that regularly generate very high engagement, ran a story which strongly suggested news of Gotabaya Rajapaksa being sued in the US was false and incorrect.

Multi-pronged British Vengeance Politics at Geneva

Shamindra Ferdinando, in Island, 9 April 2019, where the title reads “UK reiterates foreign judges as Killing Fields producers crucify Lanka again”

The House of Commons seems far more interested in Sri Lanka’s accountability in respect of war against terrorism than our own parliament. Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Mark Christopher Field, on April 04, 2019, reiterated foreign judges in Sri Lankan judicial mechanism to hear war crimes cases. Conservative Party member Field reassured the UK’s commitment to ensure participation of foreign judges in proposed mechanism in response to a query raised by Labour MP and shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury).

Mark Field Army Chief of Staff Major General Shavendra Silva recently received the appointment as the new Colonel of the Commando Regiment at its Ganemulla headquarters. Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana, PC, told Geneva sessions that it wouldn’t be fair to deprive security forces commanders of their due rights on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations. Marapana said that as allegations hadn’t been proved officers couldn’t be dealt with on the basis of them. The delegation also pointed out that information supportive of the military had been disregarded.

Vengeance Politics at UNHRC Gathering in Geneva: Two Acts

ONE = Callum Macrae’s Updated Video Documentary:“Sri Lanka and the search for justice, ten years on” ….. https://vimeo.com/319579483

An updated short film from Callum Macrae based on his earlier documentary ‘No Fire Zone’, which re-visits the final stages of Sri Lanka’s conflict to defeat the LTTE. This film was screened at the recently ended 40th sessions of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva where Sri Lanka’s Resolution 30/1 to promote Peace, Reconciliation & Accountability was again co-sponsored and rolled over for a further 2 years.

Facing Charles Sarvan: Mark His Obliteration of Context

Michael Roberts

Charles Sarvan’s recent essay in Colombo Telegraph “On ‘Reading’ A Picture” presents reflections with a dispassionate air that conveys an impression of philosophical weight above the tumult of a propaganda war in which all of us are willy-nilly involved.[1] He distances himself at the outset from the identities of the victors in the picture as Sinhalese and the vanquished as Tamil by terming that differentiation “accidental”. But, in concentrating on the horrendous assaults on women perpetrated by men, he proceeds to a presentation of the contemporary Tamil litany about the horrendous acts inflicted on the Tamils in the last stages of Eelam War IV. He does this without any historical, political and cartographic contextualization of the events that unfolded from mid-2006 to May 2009.

 Map I = The Situation in late December 2008