Category Archives: Bodu Bala Sena

July 14, 2014 · 4:02 am

Behind the Scenes: The American Contribution to the Current Crisis in Sri Lanka

Rajiva Wijesinha** responding to an Editorial Request to comment on Daya Gamage: “The American Agenda for Sri Lanka’s National Issue,” …. http://thuppahis.com/2014/07/05/the-american-agenda-for-sri-lankas-national-issues-1970s-2014/

The request to write an article on US Policy towards Sri Lanka in 2008/2009 came at a timely moment, for I had been reflecting in some anguish on the crisis that the Sri Lankan government is now facing. I believe that this crisis is of the government’s own creation, but at the same time I believe that its root causes lie in US policy towards us during the period noted.

Nishan de Mel of Verite Research, one of the organizations now favoured by the Americans to promote change, accused me recently of being too indulgent to the Sri Lankan government. I can understand his criticism, though there is a difference between understanding some phenomenon and seeking to justify it. My point is that, without understanding what is going on, the reasons for what a perceptive Indian journalist has described as the ‘collective feeling that the Sri Lankan State and Government are either unable or unwilling’ to protect Muslims from the current spate of attacks, we will not be able to find solutions. Continue reading →

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June 25, 2014 · 3:40 am

Victimized Muslims of Aluthgama-Beruwela express Grief and Legitimate Resentment

Dharisha Bastians, courtesy of Daily FT, 19 June 2014 ……. http://www.ft.lk/2014/06/19/what-was-our-crime/

Thousands of displaced people in the riot-rocked towns of Beruwala and Aluthgama are too afraid to go home again – and many of them have no homes to return to

Muslims protests etc- BBS 44…..Pix by Ishara S. Kodikara (AFP) and Shilpa Samaratung

The watcher at the Al Humeisara Central College in China Fort is compulsive about keeping the tall gates padlocked at all times. He ushers authorised vehicles in and hurriedly shuts the gates behind them, casting furtive looks on the road outside. Inside the closely-guarded gates, schoolroom desks and chairs are stacked in corners. All the signs of mass displacement abound – large water tanks, truckloads of relief items and make-shift first aid centres. Infants and toddlers snooze in the stifling noon day heat on the floors of fly-infested classrooms. Some of them are only a few weeks old. The children seem to be the only ones removed from the anger and sorrow that is pervasive in the schoolyard. Thrilled to be skipping school and surrounded by dozens of playmates, they put the Al Humeisara swing sets and climbing frames to good use. It could be Vavuniya or Batticaloa five or six years ago. Except that the camp lies barely 60 kilometres from the capital Colombo and this is not a war zone. Continue reading →

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Filed under accountability, atrocities, Bodu Bala Sena, cultural transmission, economic processes, historical interpretation, legal issues, life stories, Muslims in Lanka, population, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, riots and pogroms, sri lankan society, tolerance, vengeance, violence of language, women in ethnic conflcits, zealotry

June 23, 2014 · 2:34 pm

The Induction Oath of Tamil Tiger Fighters at their Passing-Out Ceremony

Michael Roberts

Adle plus Tigress Adele Balasingham and a LTTE fighter — BBC, 1991

Apropos of the misleading interpretations of suicide attacks by Western commentators such as the political scientist, Robert Pape, it is important to note that the act of suicide was initially adopted by the LTTE as a defensive tool to protect the organisation from the leaking of information after capture. It was also a mark of their dedication to the Tamil liberation cause and thus a method of drawing popular admiration. It was not till 5 July 1987 that it was deployed as a low cost precision weapon when Miller (a nom de guerre) drove a truck bomb into an SL Army encampment at Nelliyadi. This was but one instance of uyirayutham — life as weapon.

As training was formalised, like all armies the LTTE had a passing out ceremony for their fighters. The induction of a batch of female fighters is graphically depicted in a BBC documentary filmed in the LTTE territories in 1991 where one sees/hears them chant in unison in response to their female commander’s initial prompt:

“Our revolutionary organisation’s purified aim

is for a free society to achieve Tamil Eelam

My life and soul and all this I sacrifice to

our organisation’s leader, our brother, Mr Prabhakaran

We fully accept that for him we will be very faithful and trustworthy

The aim of the Tigers – Tamils’ freedom.” Continue reading →

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