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Contributing Editor for Military Affairs courrtey of The Weekend Australian, 1/2 April 2017, where the title is ‘There’s something worse in store once the ‘caliphate’ goes” … note 70 comments already on lineOn a cold rainy evening last week, I stood in the Jordanian capital, Amman, watching images of the terrorist attack in central London. One sequence, looping every few minutes on Al Jazeera, showed attacker Khalid Masood lying wounded on cobblestones outside parliament. A police officer covered him with a sub-machinegun while others treated his injuries before carefully placing him on a stretcher and, already dead, into an ambulance. In another sequence, Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood worked frantically — streaked in blood — to save police constable Keith Palmer, whom Masood had stabbed moments earlier. Ellwood — whose brother Jonathan was murdered by Jemaah Islamiah in the 2002 Bali bombing and who, full disclosure, is a friend and former army colleague — has been called a hero for rushing to Palmer’s aid. I would rather say that he did what he was trained to do. He did it bravely and well, without hesitation, as did many others that afternoon in a city that’s seen more than its share of terror and has some of the best public safety systems anywhere.
An Iraqi girl cries over her father’s body in the Al-Risala neighbourhood in Mosul.
Category Archives: asylum-seekers
European Mayhem in World War Two and Their Refugees in the Middle East
Ishaan Tharoor, in The Washington Post, where the chosen title is “The forgotten story of European refugee camps in the Middle East”
Tens of thousands of refugees fled a war. They journeyed across the Eastern Mediterranean, a trip filled with peril. But the promise of sanctuary on the other side was too great. No, this is not the plight faced by Syrian refugees, desperate to escape the desolation of their homeland and find a safer, better life in Europe. Rather, it’s the curious and now mostly forgotten case of thousands of people from Eastern Europe and the Balkans who were housed in a series of camps across the Middle East, including in Syria, during World War II.
As the Nazi and Soviet war machines rolled through parts of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, vast civilian populations were displaced in their wake. In areas occupied by fascist troops, Jewish communities and other undesired minorities faced the harshest onslaught, but others, particularly those suspected of backing partisan fighters, also were subject to targeted attacks and forced evacuations. Continue reading
Filed under accountability, asylum-seekers, atrocities, cultural transmission, discrimination, historical interpretation, immigration, life stories, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, tolerance, travelogue, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, world affairs
Manipulative Distortions & Duplicity in ABC Programme on Nauru Detention Centres
Carolina Overington & Rosie Lewis, in The Australian, 19 October 2016, where the title runs “ABC’s Four Corners slammed over old, selective Nauru footage.” Go to http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/broadcast/abcs-four-corners-slammed-over-old-selective-nauru-footage/news-story/f80ceeb432f4ec5907a10beff3697877 for Blog comments from Aussies and note the Caustic Summing up by The Editor, Thuppahi at the end of this post.
The ABC has endured excoriating criticism of its flagship current affairs program, Four Corners, after Monday’s episode about refugee children on Nauru was found to include old photographs of facilities no longer in use, and random footage of brawling adults, previously published on YouTube by a user known only as “NoRulz”. During intense questioning at Senate estimates yesterday, ABC editorial director Alan Sunderland admitted the ABC did not film the footage that went to air on Monday night, but said he was satisfied the vision was “appropriate” for a program devoted to the lives of refugee children on Nauru.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton last night accused the ABC of irresponsibility and said Four Corners had declined to use new photos and videos, offered by his office, of schools upgraded at a cost of $8.3 million. The Australian has established that the program included what appears to be random footage of a group of men on Nauru hitting each other with steel poles that can also be found on a YouTube channel run by NoRulz. On YouTube, the footage is in a video called “Who Let The Dogs Out”. It is one of a series of fight videos posted by NoRulz, who has also posted clips called “Nauru Shit Shit Fight” and “Batud the Deadly”.
The ABC used the footage to illustrate the Four Corners argument that Nauru is a violent society where refugees feel unsafe, because they have witnessed and been subjected to acts of violence. Continue reading
Filed under accountability, asylum-seekers, atrocities, Australian culture, australian media, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, disparagement, doctoring evidence, fundamentalism, Indian Ocean politics, landscape wondrous, life stories, news fabrication, politIcal discourse, power politics, racist thinking, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, world events & processes
Returned Tamil Asylum Seekers Today: A Jaundiced and Gullible Australian Reporter’s View
Greg Bearup, in The Australian, 31 October 2016, where the title is “In the Wash-Up Asylum Loser Wins” …. with emphasis in this presentation being t e work of The Editor, Thuppahi.
The crab-trapper of Jaffna is a happy man; he has a sturdy boat with a new Suzuki motor. Each morning he rises before dawn to motor out to a vast lagoon in his new auto rickshaw to fish for prawns and crabs — partly funded by the $5000 given to him by Australian taxpayers. In August 2012, when Marcus Pireesan fled Sri Lanka for Australia in search of a better life, Jaffna, the northern Tamil capital and his home town, was a very different place from what it is today.
Pireesan with some of his children — Pic Greg Bearup
The long civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ended in 2009 – a UN report estimating that 40,000 people died in final months of the conflict, mainly civilians – but the Rajapaksa regime, which brutally obliterated the Tigers, was still in power; young Tamil men were still being bundled into government vans and never seen again. “We lived in constant fear,” Pireesan, 40, tells me, “just knowing information was dangerous. You could be stopped at a roadblock and kidnapped (by the government forces) and no one would ever know.” And fishermen like him were told where and on what days they could fish. Continue reading
Filed under asylum-seekers, Australian culture, australian media, authoritarian regimes, discrimination, economic processes, historical interpretation, human rights, landscape wondrous, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, people smugglers, politIcal discourse, population, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, the imaginary and the real, transport and communications, truth as casualty of war, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes
Lavan Tharmarajah: From Tamil Refugee to Major in Australian Army
Kresant Mahilal, 16 October 2016, whose title stresses “Six Life Lessons in Self Leadership” … see http://www.kminspires.com/how-a-sri-lankan-refugee-became-an-australian-army-major-six-life-lessons-in-self-leadership/
I couldn’t be happier and prouder of one of my best mates Major Seralaadan Tharmarajah aka Lavan. This week, he became a Major in the Australian Army. 19 years ago we both landed on Australian soil to call this land home. Both from single parent households, both from developing countries with a history of racial tensions and violence and both of us looking to find our place in multicultural Australia. We had a lot in common as we sat next to each other in our Homebush Boys, Year 10 ESL class!
Lavan is not one who usually talks about his journey. However his journey has taught me many lessons and I believe it’s important to share it. At a time when many question the value of letting refugees into a country, when racial tensions everywhere are high and when people give up hope on their dreams and following their passions because of a fast changing world and an uncertain future– the lessons I have learned from Lavan, and now Major Tharmarajah stick with me because of its simplicity and his walking the talk on his life philosophy.
Major Seralaadan Tharmarajah 
Filed under asylum-seekers, Australian culture, cultural transmission, democratic measures, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, patriotism, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, Tamil migration, travelogue, welfare & philanthophy, world affairs
Oh to be Koala in the Wet !!
………. Courtesy of The Australian, 15 September 2016
Groundviews on Disappearances and the OMP
Raisa Wickrematunga: “Searching for Answers: The Road to the OMP,” 30 August 2016, https://groundviews.org/2016/08/30/searching-for-answers-the-road-to-the-omp/
Bhavani Fonseka: “The Office on Missing Persons: A New Chapter or Another Empty Promise?” 18 August 2016, https://groundviews.org/2016/08/18/the-office-on-missing-persons-a-new-chapter-or-another-empty-promise/
Filed under accountability, asylum-seekers, constitutional amendments, democratic measures, discrimination, disparagement, doctoring evidence, economic processes, gordon weiss, governance, historical interpretation, IDP camps, Indian Ocean politics, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, news fabrication, NGOs, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, propaganda, Rajapaksa regime, reconciliation, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, the imaginary and the real, truth as casualty of war, UN reports, war reportage, welfare & philanthophy, women in ethnic conflcits, world events & processes, zealotry
Look People! … Familial Love and Oneness
Peek-a-Boo
Yasmin Sooka on the Warpath Again
Shamindra Ferdinando, in The Island, 29 June 2016, where the title is “Sooka’s latest report to UNHRC: Glaring omissions”
The study disclosed that LTTE personnel, including those who had been with Shanmugalingam Sivashankar alias Pottu Amman’s dreaded intelligence service, having secured citizenship in European countries, including the UK. Obviously, the report was meant to intensify pressure on Sri Lanka on the Geneva front, justify hybrid war crimes court on the basis of exaggerated and unsubstantiated accusations directed at the Sri Lankan military. Continue reading
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, asylum-seekers, disparagement, doctoring evidence, governance, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, landscape wondrous, law of armed conflict, life stories, LTTE, news fabrication, NGOs, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, propaganda, Rajapaksa regime, reconciliation, Responsibility to Protect or R2P, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, truth as casualty of war, vengeance, war crimes, war reportage, women in ethnic conflcits, world events & processes, zealotry
