Stephen Labrooy has moved house
Author Archives: thuppahi
Labrooy’s Labour of Love: Restoring a Dutch House in the Dutch Fort of Galle, 1 Middle Street
Stephen Labrooy has moved house
Filed under cultural transmission, sri lankan society, Uncategorized, unusual people
In memory of Professor Freddie Bartholomeusz and Peradeniya
Ranjan Abayasekara
Earlier this year an email was circulated which especially touched the hearts of Peradeniya Alumni in all corners of the world. It was titled “The world’s most beautiful university is in full bloom again”. The pictures of the flowering trees and scenic surroundings took us back in mind and spirit to the place we were fortunate to call home during an important part of our lives.
Those who gave of their time, energy and wealth to create ‘the worlds most beautiful university’, certainly had vision when they landscaped it. Generations of University students and staff would carry imprinted images of the flora of the University with them, wherever in the world they roamed. The University at Peradeniya was created by generous endowments of Ceylonese – who wished to create an institution for the ages – their gift to their Motherland. Continue reading
Filed under life stories, sri lankan society, unusual people
Asoka Handagama’s INI AVAN, or “Him, Here, After,” in Paris
Press Release from the SL Embassy of Paris
On November 28th, 2012, a special screening of Ini Avan (Him, Here After), Asoka Handagama’s latest movie, was organized at Club Lincoln, in Paris, by Heliotrope Films. Premiered at Cannes 2012 as one of the films under the Association of Independent Cinema ACID (l’Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion), Ini Avan has been listed in some of the most prestigious film festivals in the world during the past months including Toronto, Edinburg, Tokyo, Hanoi. Continue reading
Paper Tigers on the Prowl: Rumors, Violence and Agency in the Up-Country of Sri Lanka
Daniel Bass of Florida Atlantic University in Social Thought and Commentary
In February 2007, international press reports from Pakistan were filled with accounts of Pakistanis refusing to participate in polio vaccination campaigns coordinated by UNICEF out of fear that the vaccines caused sterilization (see Latif 2007; Walsh 2007). Several local clerics had claimed that the vaccines were actually part of an American-led conspiracy to sterilize Muslims. Similar rumors about vaccinations and sterilization were widespread in Nigeria’s Kano state in 2004 (see Associated Press 2004; Walsh 2007), and had also received significant attention in the international press. However, press accounts of these rumors contain little to no explanation for why local leaders in Pakistan and Nigeria spread these rumors, except for accusations of ignorance or general references to anti-Americanism. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
Jaffna and the North today: Jehan Perera’s visit
Jehan Perera, in the Island, 27 November 2012
The landscape in the more densely populated parts of the once war ravaged North is a rapidly changing one. The government’s focus on investing in physical infrastructure such as public buildings and roads is showing visible results. Suddenly the skeletal structures of buildings get filled out and transform the appearance of an entire area. When we passed the town of Kilinochchi, the onetime administrative capital of the LTTE, it was lighted up even though the hour was late in the night. It looked like a model town. The challenge for the government will be to make this external change an internal one as well, in which the people who meant to be the beneficiaries also rejoice in the transformation and feel that justice is being done to them. Continue reading
Adelaide University establishes scholarship link in Sri Lanka
Courtesy of The Island, 27 November 2012
Professor Quester is the lady in a blouse and Dr. Amal Karunaratne is the elegant gent with silver-hair to our right
The University of Adelaide, one of Australia’s leading research-intensive universities and ranked among the top one per cent worldwide, is for the first time offering a scholarship for a Sri Lankan student to study for a bachelor’s degree. Prof. Pascale Quester, Pro Vice Chancellor (Academic), Adelaide University, addressing a ceremony to announce the Lindsay McWha Accomodation Scholarship, valued at AUD 6,250, to a Sri Lankan student, at the Cinnamon Grand in Colombo on Friday, said that selection would be strictly on merit and it had to be taken in the year for which it was offered and could not be deferred. Continue reading
Chandrika bewails recent encroachments on the judiciary
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, in The Island, 27 November 2012, where the title is “Democracy, the State and the Judiciary”
The last few months have seen several attempts at interference with the proper functioning of the judiciary. The Mannar incident, the unprecedented statement of the Judicial Service Commission, the physical attack on the Secretary of the JSC who released the statement on the direction of the JSC, use of State media to attack the judiciary, especially the Chief Justice, and now a Motion to impeach the Chief Justice. A Member of Parliament who submitted the motion to the Speaker has publicly stated that the reason for the impeachment motion is the Supreme Court’s determination on the Divineguma Bill. As that Bill seeks to make severe inroads into the areas of competence of Provincial Councils while concentrating power in the hands of a single Cabinet Minister, such a determination was only to be expected. But, in the intolerant political environment that pertains today, judicial decision unpalatable to the Government are not tolerated. Continue reading
Velupillai Pirapāharan: VEERA MARANAM
Michael Roberts
That the LTTE talaivar, Velupillai Pirapāharan, died a heroic death as a vīra maranam on the 18th or 19th May 2009 is now certain.[1]Though Tamil sources claim that he shot himself with his pistol when he and his troops were trapped in the mangrove swamps on the eastern shoreline of Nandhikadal lagoon, the weight of evidence suggests that he was hit by a bullet “traveling diagonally across VP’s skull, probably from left forehead to right rear of skull –[a bullet that was part of] either a rifle round, or a rifle-calibre round”(David Blacker, email to Roberts, 14 February 2012).
India hangs Ajmal Kasab, the one surviving gunman of 2008 Mumbai attacks
Mohamed Ajmal Kasab
NBC News staff and wire reports
India hanged Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, the only militant to have survived the 2008 attacks on the financial capital Mumbai, officials said Wednesday.In August, India’s Supreme Court upheld Kasab’s death sentence over the attack on a string of targets in Mumbai that killed 166 people. Kasab, 25, was a Pakistani national. He was executed at 7:30 a.m. local time.
The execution at Yerawada Prison in Pune, near Mumbai, came just hours after President Pranab Mukherjee rejected a mercy plea by Kasab, who had said he belonged to the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Continue reading
Filed under accountability, fundamentalism, terrorism, world affairs
