Kieran de Zoysa’s Last Hurrah: “I am so Sri Lankan …. A Real Achchaaru”

Kieren Shafritz De Zoysa’s Essay “Sri Lanka: My Cultural Connections” … submitted for the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition … written just before he was among those killed by a Muslim bomber at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel on Easter Sunday 21/4/2019**

The tropical sun burns bright. On my way to school, red and black buses full of office workers, tuk-tuks of all colours, Porsches, Land Rovers, and BMWs crowd the roads. There are few road rules. I pass a speeding blur of white colonial buildings, ancient banyan trees, old elegant homes behind high walls, short ladies pushing trash carts, small kadeys selling cream crackers and sodas, and road-side hawkers offering freshly plucked red rambutans, golden yellow mangoes, young orange coconuts. Steel and glass office towers stand high over small houses. Cranes rise above expensive new apartment buildings. Occasionally I see a Buddhist monk in orange robes. Lonely, stray dogs roam the streets and sidewalks scavenging for food, near tourists who turn bright lobster red taking selfies in front of thousand-year-old temples.

Eastern Australia is HOT and Burning

Scott Morrison the Water-Boy at Manuka Oval

Essays on Sinhala Buddhist Extremism towards the Muslims in Sri Lanka

 Iselin Frydenlund** presenting a review article in the Journal of Religion and Violence, Vol. 6, No. 2, 201830 … reviewing Buddhist Extremists and Muslim Minorities: Religious Conflict in Contemporary Sri Lanka. Edited by John Clifford Holt. Oxford University Press, 2016. 254 pp. Hardcover $105.00 /ISBN: 9780190624378. Paperback $35.00 / ISBN: 9780190624385.

The Veddas in the East of Ceylon in the 1950s

L.C. Arulpragasam, in Sunday Observer, 13 October 2019, where the title is  “The Veddas and the Gal Oya scheme: Ultimate resettlement at Bintenne”

In the Jungles of Bintenne: In 1950 I undertook a sociological survey along with Mr. Kuda Bibile, a University colleague, of the Veddas living in the jungles of Wellassa and Bintenne in the Badulla District of the Uva Province. The only authoritative study of the Veddas at that time had been done by Dr. C. Seligmann, a German anthropologist, in 1911. I carried his heavy tome around with me on my entire journey.

Unsung Cricketing Heroes at Lahore, 3rd March 2009

Michael Roberts

 While we are still groping in the dark when interpreting the culprits and motivations behind the attack on the cricketing entourage heading for Gaddafi Stadium on 3^rd March 2009, it is not out of place to highlight some of the heroes of that event, a few recognised THEN …. but there are, in my view, two more to add to that list.

Khalil Chris Broad Dilshan Ahsan Raza Thamel

That Nightmare Moment: Farbrace and Bayliss give BBC A Detailed Account of the Lahore Assault, 3rd March 2009

On the 3rd March 2019 the BBC took the heady step of interviewing the longstanding management team of Trevor Bayliss and Paul Farbrace about their nightmare-experiences at the roundabout approaching Gaddafi Stadium in Karachi from 8.39 am on 3rd March 2009.

On 3 March 2009, the Sri Lanka cricket team were in Lahore, Pakistan. It was the third morning of another Test match. Shortly before 09:00 local time, just outside the Gaddafi Stadium, 12 gunmen ambushed them. Six policemen and a driver escorting match officials were killed. The attackers were armed with assault rifles, grenades and rocket launchers. England coach Trevor Bayliss and his assistant Paul Farbrace, both then working with Sri Lanka, were on the team bus. Here, 10 years on, they explain how they survived.

03 Mar 2009, LAHORE, Pakistan — epa01653633 Pakistani Police commandoes guard Gadaffi Cricket Stadium, where Sri Lankan cricketers were taken following an attack in Lahore Pakistan on 03 March 2009. Unidentified gunmen attacked Sri Lanka’s cricket team 03 March when it was being escorted to a local stadium in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, leaving six policemen and two civilians dead and four Sri Lankan players injured, media reports and officials said. EPA/STRINGER — Image by © STRINGER/epa/Corbis