Aanya Wipulasena in Ceylon Today, August 2025
The decision to work overseas wasn’t easy. Burdened by debt, 25-year-old Nelum Niroshani, a mother of one from Anuradhapura, felt she had no choice. Her plan was simple: Take a job as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia, earn enough to support her family, repay her loans and then return home to her seven-year-old child. But her time in the Middle East quickly turned into a nightmare.
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Tomos Morgan, BBC News, 19 August 2025, where the title runs thus: “Faces of Welsh convicts sent to Australia recreated by AI” ++
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has helped researchers generate what they believe could have been the faces of Welsh convicts sent to Australia in the 19th century. The lives of 60 criminals deported from Anglesey for crimes as small as stealing a handkerchief have been traced by a team of volunteers and researchers.
They have used detailed prisoner records from the time, historical sketches and, where possible, photos of the prisoners’ modern day descendants to create a profile of what they may have looked like.
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N. Sathiya Moorthy, in Ceylon Today, 22 August 2025, where the title reads “How Historic is the Opportunity” ... with highlighting being the intervention of The Editor Thuppahi
In what has become the ritualistic report of the UN Human Rights Commissioner to the UNHRC Council of 48-member nations, elected by rotation, incumbent Volker Türk seems to have settled for a credible, independent mechanism to probe Sri Lanka’s war crimes and other allegations of human rights violations. This is in contrast to the decade-plus-long attempts by the ‘international community’ (read: West) to impose an ‘independent, international mechanism’ for the purpose.
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Richard Koenigsberg, whose chosen title is “LOVING WHAT KILLS US: The History of the Twentieth Century”
Loving what kills us: what Nazism was.
Loving what kills us: what the Second World War was for the Japanese.
Loving and Dying for Stalin: what Russian Communism was.
Loving and Dying for Mao: what Chinese Communism was. Continue reading
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Dennis M. McGilvray, in an article pubd in 2006 in the India Review, vol. 5, nos. 3–4, July/October, 2006, pp. 372–393 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC …. ISSN 1473-6489 print; 1557-3036 online DOI:10.1080/14736480600939132 … one bearing this title: “Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka: An Anthropologist Confronts the Real World
Recent calls for a new “public anthropology” to promote greater visibility for ethnographic research in the eyes of the press and the general public, and to bolster the courage of anthropologists to address urgent issues of the day, are laudable although probably also too hopeful. Yet, while public anthropology could certainly be more salient in American life, it already exists in parts of the world such as Sri Lanka where social change, ethnic conflict, and natural catastrophe have unavoidably altered the local context of ethnographic fieldwork. Much of the anthropology of Sri Lanka in the last three decades would have to count as “public” scholarship, because it has been forced to address the contemporary realities of labor migration, religious politics, the global economy, and the rise of violent ethno-nationalist movements. As a long-term observer of the Tamil-speaking Hindu and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka’s eastern coastal region, I have always been attracted to the classic anthropological issues of caste, popular religion, and matrilineal kinship. However, in the wake of the civil wars for Tamil Eelam and the 2004 tsunami disaster, I have been forced to confront (somewhat uneasily) a fundamentally altered field- work situation. This gives my current work a stronger flavor of public anthropology, while providing an opportunity for me to trace older matrilocal family patterns and Hindu-Muslim religious traditions under radically changed conditions.
BEACHFRONT HOME DESTROYED BY TSUNAMI, MARUTHAMUNAI. AUGUST 2005
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Tamil and Sinhala versions attached
Sri Lanka has opportunity to break from past – Türk
GENEVA (13 August 2025) – A report published today by the UN Human Rights Office calls on Sri Lanka’s Government to seize the historic opportunity to break with entrenched impunity, implement transformative reforms, and deliver long-overdue justice and accountability for serious violations and abuses committed in the past, including international crimes.
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GV NOTE INTRODUCING THE AUTHOR : In 2001 Duleep De Chickera was ordained the 14th Anglican Bishop of Colombo. Educated at Royal College, Colombo and representing the college at 1st XV Rugby, he gained his training for the ministry at the Theological College of Lanka in Pilimathalawa, earning a B.Th thereafter earning a M.Sc. from Keble College, Oxford. He has served as chaplain and then as the sub-warden of S. Thomas’ College, Mt Lavinia. And in 2008 was accorded the honour of preaching a key sermon at the Lambeth Conference in the presence of 650 Bishops from around the world.
When US President Donald Trump arrogantly suggested that the neighbouring Arab States should absorb the Gaza population as a solution to Israel’s decimation of Gaza, he announced what discerning persons the world over had already perceived – the earliest Zionist Israeli arrivals, courtesy Lord Balfour, had come to take it all.
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Rohan Gunaratna in FACEBOOK, August 2025
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Congratulations to Sri Lankan-born American Anthropologist, Prof. Sharika Thiranagama, on winning the Davidson Prize at Cambridge University, where she was appointed a Scholar of St Johns.
Winner of Stanford University’s “Lifetime award for Academic achievement in Archaeology and Anthropology”, Sharika wrote “In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka” published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2011.
…Rajini Continue reading
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DBS Jeyaraj in 2022 at https://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/?p=67620 where the title reads “Vijaya Kumaratunga: Charismatic Actor-Politician May Have Changed Nation’s Destiny” …… Posted by Administrator on 21 February 2022, 1:11 am
The political landscape of Sri Lanka seems gloomy and desolate. Most of the actors who strut about the political stage posing as visionaries and leaders are in actuality empty vessels devoid of substance. Proverbial wisdom tells us that empty vessels make most sound. This is most apparent in the cacophony of voices currently prevalent in the polity. In the words of William Butler Yeats “ The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.” The positive dream of Sri Lanka evolving into an inclusive, plural nation is slowly turning into a numerical majoritarian hegemonic nightmare.
Vijaya Kumaratunga in Jaffna
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Shenali D. Waduge, whose slashing sarcastic essay is entitled “Let’s Celebrate Prabakaran & the LTTE’s Glorious Achievements!” ... with the highlighting being that in the original item
A tribute to the world’s most misunderstood mass murderer and his liberation-through-terror campaign.
They say greatness demands sacrifice—and Velupillai Prabakaran understood this better than most. He wasn’t content with speeches; he offered the world a blueprint: to build a homeland, first destroy the present; to claim justice, first silence every voice—especially your own people’s; to prove your worth, leave no witness behind. For over three decades, he led with unmatched precision: dismantling democracy, eliminating dissent, recruiting children, and bleeding civilians dry—all while demanding the world call it liberation. Some build nations through unity; he built his with bunkers, landmines, cyanide, and the bones of the innocent. And still, they light candles for him. They hold commemorations in universities. UN officials attend. Foreign parliamentarians give speeches. So, in the spirit of glorifying terror, let’s not just mourn Velupillai Prabakaran—let’s celebrate the man who redefined cruelty and called it Eelam, by honoring every child stolen, every right violated, and every drop of blood shed in his name.
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thuppahi
