Category Archives: discrimination

January 15, 2023 · 12:38 am

United Kingdom Condemned by HRW

A Statement from Human Rights Watch, 12 January 2023: “Human Rights Watch Issues Damning Verdict for UK. World Report 2023 Says UK Policies Raise ‘Grave Human Rights Concerns”

The United Kingdom government repeatedly sought to damage and undermine human rights protections in 2022, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2023.   “In 2022, we saw the most significant assault on human rights protections in the UK in decades,” said Yasmine Ahmed, UK director at Human Rights Watch. “From your right to protest to your ability to hold institutions to account, fundamental and hard-won rights are being systematically dismantled.”

Volunteers sort food into food parcels at the Rumney Forum community charity on November 8, 2022 in Cardiff, Wales. © 2022 Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

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January 13, 2023 · 12:26 pm

Murali’s Epic History: Facing Many Powers …. A Bibliography

Compiled by Michael Roberts  …

  Murali is ’embraced’ by Tamil fans in Jaffna in 2004

 

Dr. Barclay “Buddy” Reid 2022 “Muralitharan: the arm that did not chuck,” 21 December 2021, https://thuppahis.com/2022/12/21/muralitharan-the-arm-that-did-not-chuck/

School of Human Movement, UWA 2004 “The Murali Report,” 15 May 2004, https://www.rediff.com/cricket/2004/may/15murali.htm …. signed by Daryl Foster

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December 22, 2022 · 6:51 pm

Five Sturdy Men Who Saved Murali’s Doosra Innovation

Michael Roberts

Dr Barclay Reid, “Buddy Reid” in most minds, has this week related his role in medically examining Muralitharan’s peculiar physiognomy and clarifying the  process of mystification that led some Australian umpires to no-ball him in late 1995 as part of a process  — as they thought — of cleansing the cricket field of “throwers” (see https://thuppahis.com/2022/12/21/muralitharan-the-arm-that-did-not-chuck/).

Jacqueline Alderson of UWA’s Technology team preparing Murali for a test as part of Foster’s team …

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December 20, 2022 · 10:58 am

The Hermon Lineage in the Plantation World of Ceylon & Lanka

Richard Hermon to Errol Fernando, early December 2022, responding to “The Power of Privilege: Illegitimate Progeny in the Plantations of Ceylon and Beyond” **

Dear Errol

As a Eurasian myself on both sides, since both my grandfathers were Brits and both my grandmothers were Sinhalese: one Kandyan from Welimada, and one Low-Country from Baddegama to whom both my grandfathers were married.

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December 14, 2022 · 1:27 am

Standing Forth as Ceylonese in the Early 19th Century

Michael Roberts  …. presenting the first section in Chapter X of People Inbetween (1989) pp 140-47. … The chapter is entitled “Standing Forth as Ceylonese, 1850s” *++*

Introduction

We need to begin by reaching back into the Maritime Provinces of Ceylon during the first decades of British rule after their seizure of these territories in 1795-96. We shall first recapitulate some of the points made in previous chapters.

We saw that the distinction between VOC officialdom and the Burghers quickly disappeared under the British; that the Hollandsche and even the Tupass of yesteryear were defined as Europeans in some British regulations. We also saw that there was some measure of social interaction between the British and creole families of respectable status during the early decades of British rule (supra: 50ff). In both social intercourse and collective designation, however, the old distinction between the Hollandsche and the Tupass persisted in the form of the opposition between the “Burgher Inhabitants” (or its equivalent, for example, “Dutch”) and the “Portuguese” (or Tupass, Topaz, Mestizos, Mechanics) when people used the English language; and in Sinhala between “lánsi” on the one hand and “tuppáhi” or “párángi” or sinno on the other.[1]

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December 11, 2022 · 6:14 pm

Bracegirdle’s AntI-Slavery Struggle in British Ceylon, 1937

A Section translated  from Robert Gunawardena, Satanaka Satahan, Kosgama: 2007, Vijith Gunawardena: ….. provided here by Vinod Moonesinghe  …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

In April 1937, a remarkable incident took place which strengthened the anti-imperialist struggle [in Sri Lanka} and aroused the interest of the masses. That is, the Bracegirdle Incident which is spoken about by older people to this day.

 Mark Antony Lyster Bracegirdle, an Australian, came to Lanka in December 1936 to gain appointment as the assistant superintendant of a tea estate owned by a British plantation company. It is possible that the plantation company which appointed him to this position did not know that he had been a young member of the Australian Communist Party. Having come to Lanka, Bracegirdle took up his duties in a tea estate not far from Madulkele, beyond Katugastota.

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December 4, 2022 · 12:01 pm

Caste in Jaffna

Prashanth Kuganathan** whose title runs thus: “Social Stratification in Jaffna: A Survey of Recent Research on Caste”

A SYNOPSIS: Since 1983, war has dominated the perception of Sri Lanka. This has affected scholarship on the country, such that the subjects of an overwhelming number of research proposals and publications have been on the war and the prospects and prescriptions for peace. This survey paper is an attempt to locate the system of caste in transition in the Jaffna Peninsula by reviewing recent literature written after the commencement of the war. While detailed ethnographies of caste in Jaffna may have temporarily come to a halt, caste practices have not and remain a salient part of everyday life among the Tamils in Sri Lanka. As the war ended in 2009, it is therefore important that social scientists on Sri Lanka revisit the topic of caste, that is an integral part of not just Tamil culture or society, but being Tamil itself. As the study of caste is dominated by research in India, a microanalysis of Jaffna and Sri Lanka, particularly the nuances of this system in transition due to war and militancy, could contribute to the macro-study of caste at a sub-continental perspective.

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December 2, 2022 · 2:35 pm

House of Lords Debating Sri Lanka & Its Truth Commission Today

HOUSE OF LORDS: Sri Lanka Truth & Reconciliation Commission 

A topical question on Sri Lanka was raised by Conservative peer Lord Daniel Moylan in the House of Lords on Thursday, December 1st which was followed by additional supplementary questions that were answered by Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, Minister of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office (Middle East, North Africa, South Asia & the UN).

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November 29, 2022 · 8:00 pm

Re-visiting the Case of Mark Anthony Lyster Bracegirdle of 1937: A Landmark Judgment that upheld the Liberty of the Individual and that affirmed the Fairness of ‘ British Justice’  

Prabhath de Silva, ... an article that appeared initially in the Daily Mirror, 25/26 November 2022– with highlighting in this version imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

Mark Anthony Lyster Bracegirdle (also known as Price) was born in Chelsea, England in 1912. His parents were Ina Marjorie Lyster and James Seymour Bracegirdle. His mother was a suffragette and an active member of the Labour Party. Bracegirdle migrated to Australia with his mother, and studied art, and later trained as a farmer. In 1935, he joined the Australian Young Communist League (YCL) and became an active young Communist.

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November 22, 2022 · 11:24 am

The Hill-Country Tamils: Their Shitty-Situation Then … and NOW

Ahilan Kadirgamar, in Daily Mirror, 21 November 2022, where the title reads “Hill-country Tamils and Crisis Times” …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

When our country collapses before our own eyes with one of the deepest crises in historical memory, from what vantage point should we analyse our predicament? Sri Lanka’s political economy over the last two centuries is anchored in the travails and strivings of Hill Country Tamils. Their sweat and blood, that began with the horrifying journey from South India two centuries ago as indentured labour to work in the coffee and later tea plantations, were central to building the country’s modern economy under British colonialism. However, their position in society, and for that matter even the writing of their history, was marginalised. And despite the great democratic and social welfare advances in Sri Lanka with universal suffrage in 1931 and a powerful legacy of free healthcare and education, the social, economic and political life of the Hill Country Tamil community is characterised by struggle amidst persistent crisis times.

‘Ceylon tea’ gave Sri Lanka the recognition in the world map, but the plantation workers are still languishing in their ages-old abode, known as line rooms and continue to be marginalised in education, community wellbeing and healthcare.

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