Michael Roberts
In presenting a Zoom Lecture relating to the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka in April 2021 for Dr. Geethika Dharmasinghe’s class at Colgate University in USA a month or so back, I deployed the work that went into one of books: that entitled FIRE & STORM.
I now atempt to shock people around the world with pictorial illustrations of some — note “Some” (with all its partialities) — photographs of the political and Eelam War scenarios in Sri Lanka displayed in Fire & Storm.
Filed under accountability, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, chauvinism, communal relations, cultural transmission, demography, discrimination, disparagement, economic processes, Eelam, electoral structures, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, insurrections, island economy, jihadists, landscape wondrous, language policies, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, meditations, military strategy, modernity & modernization, nationalism, performance, photography, politIcal discourse, power politics, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, trauma, truth as casualty of war, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes
Chandra Schaffter ... responding to an earnest request from Michael Roberts**
I started playing cricket from the age of five. My father who was also a good cricketer in his time, gave me great encouragement. Unfortunately, he died in 1941 when I was 11 years old. Thereafter I had nobody ever interested in my cricketing career.
Filed under accountability, communal relations, cricket selections, cultural transmission, discrimination, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, life stories, nationalism, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, S. Thomas College, self-reflexivity, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society, teaching profession, trauma, travelogue, unusual people, vengeance
Groundviews, 14 March 2023, where the title reads “Military to Face a Day of Reckoning Over the Disappeared”
In a landmark case last month, the Vavuniya High Court ordered the army to produce three LTTE members who had surrendered to the military in May 2019 and have been missing ever since, in response to a habeas corpus case filed by their wives.
Filed under accountability, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, communal relations, discrimination, disparagement, Eelam, ethnicity, female empowerment, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, law of armed conflict, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, nationalism, patriotism, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, war crimes, world events & processes, zealotry
An Observer in a Georgian Black Sea Resort Town
The NED/CIA have been using soft power to target the youth and media institutions in countries around the world. Take Georgia and Hong Kong as case studies.
Protestors rally against the draft law outside the Georgian parliament in Tbilisi.
In the last few weeks, the Georgian parliament, the elected representatives of the country, tried to introduce a Foreign Agent’s Register Act just like the one Australia introduced in 2018. The Georgian version used very similar language to the US foreign agent’s registration law which was passed in the 1930s. Suddenly, the Georgian youth came out on to street demanding the government reject this draft law. EU leaders labelled the proposed Georgian foreign register law as being “against EU values”, even though almost all EU countries have the same law. This is a repeat performance of what happened in Hong Kong in 2018-2019.
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, art & allure bewitching, centre-periphery relations, conspiracies, cultural transmission, discrimination, economic processes, education, foreign policy, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, meditations, modernity & modernization, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, world events & processes
Tony Greig and Sunil Gavaskar take to the field with A ‘Mike’
Abstract: Sri Lanka’s civil war lasted almost 26 years and cost tens of thousands of lives. Since the end of the war in 2009, several thousand asylum seekers from Sri Lanka have sought protection in Australia, but both Labor and Liberal/National Coalition governments have taken a restrictive approach to their arrival and have expressed support for the Sri Lankan government. This article explores Australia’s response to the protection needs of Sri Lankans during an earlier era, at the outbreak of the war in 1983, when a Labor government processed Tamils ‘in-country’ under Australia’s Special Humanitarian Program.
Filed under accountability, Australian culture, australian media, authoritarian regimes, charitable outreach, demography, discrimination, disparagement, economic processes, Eelam, ethnicity, foreign policy, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, Indian Ocean politics, island economy, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, refugees, rehabilitation, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, transport and communications, travelogue, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, war reportage, welfare & philanthophy, women in ethnic conflcits, working class conditions, world events & processes
Laleen Jayamanne, whose title is “Notes towards a Politics and Aesthetics of Film” in a review essay presented in The Island, 1 & 2 February 2023: the focus being Ashfaque Mohamed’s ‘Face Cover’ **
‘Face Cover’ by Ashfaque Mohamed
Asfaque Mohamed
“Black cat, at the tip of my fingers pulsates poetry,
Desiring hands, yours, nudgingly pluck those roses of mine
In the soft light of the moon
The dreams we picked from the foaming edges of waves of the sea.”
Jusla/Salani (in Face Cover)
Filed under anti-racism, art & allure bewitching, centre-periphery relations, citizen journalism, communal relations, cultural transmission, discrimination, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Islamic fundamentalism, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, meditations, modernity & modernization, Muslims in Lanka, performance, pilgrimages, politIcal discourse, religiosity, self-reflexivity, social justice, sri lankan society, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, travelogue, unusual people, working class conditions, world events & processes
Celia Donert, in History Today, February 2022, where the title reads “The Roma Holocaust”
Europe’s Roma were the victims of Nazi genocide during the Second World War, but their persecution did not end in 1945
Robert Ritter, head of the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit of Nazi Germany’s Criminal Police, conducting an interview with a Romani woman, 1936
“In 1944, I was deported to the concentration camp in Terezín, where I was imprisoned until May 1945. After returning from the concentration camp I did my military service, and then moved with my family to the village of B., as part of the drive to resettle the borderlands … My family and I lived decently from what I earned as a forestry worker; I didn’t live like a Gypsy, and I always had a fixed residence. I have never had a criminal record. Despite this, I’ve been put on the new register of Gypsies in 1947, and I was issued with a Gypsy registration card. I am requesting that my name be removed from the Gypsy register, and that my registration card be cancelled. “
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Betts & Higgins address the “Migration Policy” pursued by Australia in the context of the refugee problems arising in the context of Sri Lanka’s “Civil War.” [i.e. what most refer to as the “Eelam Wars.”]. The full title is noted below and their “Abstract” is presented.
The infamous Alex Kuhendarajah on the Sumatran(?) coast witha boatlad of Tamil refugees …. and other pictorial illustrations of refugees and their boats 
For the benefit of those not familiar with the scenario, the refugees were mostly SL Tamils, but there was a ‘supply chain’ of agents and smuggler boats from Sri Lanka, India and the Indonesian islands that also catered to Sinhala and Muslim personnel seeking “eldorado” in the West via Australia. See some bibliographical items listed at the end which will lead one to even more literature…. Michael Roberts with thanks to Johnny De Silva in Melbourne for converting the file containing the Betts & Higgins article.
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Michael Roberts
This book, with its pot pourri of cricketing items and photographs, was published in 1998 by the Walla Walla Press in Sydney. It was enabled by (A) the cooperation of two authors who never met each other: one Michael Roberts …. a Sri Lankan Australian in Adelaide and one Alfred James, an Aussie in Sydney who had a unique collection of cricketing statistics on Australian tours abroad which provided the pertinent data on their whistle-stop matches in Colombo on the trips to Britain and back – rare data that.
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thuppahi
