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Category Archives: disparagement
The House of Lords Debate on Sri Lanka and the UNHCR resolution
FROM An Eye in the Ceiling: “Sri Lanka’s UNHRC Resolution”
Lord Naseby
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following the resignation of the government of the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council where they co-sponsored with the United Kingdom Resolution 30/1 in 2015 and Resolution 34/1 in 2017, in regard to Sri Lanka, and given the progress made towards many aspects highlighted in the resolutions, what assessment they have made of whether to annul or withdraw those resolutions.
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British Government Stance on War and Aftermath castigated by Defenders of Lanka’s Realm
Rajeewa Jayaweera. in Island, 26 January 2019, with this title “Boycott UK Defense Advisor”
According to a recent media report, UK government (GoUK) has recently appointed a Resident Defense Advisor in Sri Lanka after an absence of ten years. The story was accompanied by a photograph of the newly appointed Colonel David Ashman with Chief of Defense Staff Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne taken during a courtesy call paid by the British RDA on the CDS. His purported mission is to help the Sri Lankan military to fulfill the obligations as required by the UNHRC 30/1 Resolution originated by the US and UK and so pusillanimously co-sponsored by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe-Samaraweera triumvirate.
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No Surprises with Sirisena. Challenging Mike Roberts
An Introductory Note from Michael Roberts
Gerald Peiris and I were undergraduates at Ramanathan Hall Peradeniya in the late 1950s and met on occasions when we were pursuing postgrad studies in UK and I visited Cambridge. Thereafter we were colleagues in the Arts Faculty at Peradeniya University from 1966 to 1975. Quite vitally, we were active members of the Ceylon Studies Seminar. During those seminars and at times in private tête-à-tête over drinks the two of us occasionally engaged in discussions, sometimes with sharp disagreements on specific issues.
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Pathos. Comedy. Revelation. President Sirisena’s Sermon to a ‘Captive’ Cabinet
Michael Roberts
Having been forced to accept an UNP government by a Supreme Court decision in December 2018 after he had attempted to ditch them in a coup from above in late October, President Maithripala Sirisena utilised the opportunity provided by the swearing in of a new UNP Cabinet under Ranil Wickremasinghe on 16th December 2018 to deliver a sermon to a captive audience of ‘enemies’ who were, ironically, about to enjoy the fruits of victory and destined to assume state power.[1] Sirisena’s Address was delivered in Sinhala and is marked by pathos, recrimination and selective biographical tales from the past that illuminate aspects of Sri Lankan politics.
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Prejudiced and Infantile Readings of Sri Lanka at Chatham House in 2019
Introductory Note from Michael Roberts
The public event organised by Chatham House to discuss recent events in Sri Lanka on 17th January was chaired by a University Lecturer at University College London whose specialty is “human rights,” rather than any one of the Sri Lankan specialists teaching at British Universities (for e.g. Rajesh Venugopal, Asanga Welikala, Sujit Suvisundaram, Zoltan Beidermann and Alan Strathern). The combination of ignorance, distortion and prejudice that guided the organisation and direction of the debate was exposed in the opening lines of this Chairperson, one Kate Cronin-Furman. “[We are meeting today some ten years after the “final push” of the Sri Lankan Army in a war that ended in May 2009 – “a final phase where the UN estimates said that more than 40,000 civilians were killed by that military [action].”
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“Both the Cricketing and Political Dispensations in Sri Lanka are in Deep Shit” says Gideon Haigh
Gideon Haigh, in The Weekend Australian, 19-20 January 2019, where the title is “Crisis of cricket and democracy in Sri Lanka”
In Shehan Karunatilaka’s kaleidoscopic novel of Sri Lanka and cricket, Chinaman, the narrator stops to consider whether the game is so nationally useful at all. “Does Sri Lanka need more schoolteachers, more soldiers or more wicketkeepers?’’ he asks. “A middle-order batsman or a bank manager? A specialist gully fieldsman or a civil engineer?’’ Needless to say, he resolves the conundrum favourably to the game. “Left-arm spinners cannot unclog your drains, teach your children or cure you of disease,” he concludes. “But once in a while, the very best of them will bowl a ball that will bring an entire nation to its feet. And while there may be no practical use in that, there is almost certainly value.”
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The Political Struggle in Sri Lanka: Three Pugilists … Hattotuwa … Chandraprema … Philips
ONE. Sanjana Hattotuwa: “Musical Chairs,” Island, 12 January 2019
The appointment of a new Army Chief of Staff. A fresh denial around the use of chemical weapons. The denunciation of a civil society protest against mainstream media supportive of the constitutional coup, not by members of the SLPP, but by those in the UNP and government. A photograph of a former President, the incumbent and the Prime Minister, comfortably seated next to each other, enjoying or at least at a musical show. Newspaper headlines and reports framing dire warnings by the former President, who true to form, relies on the capture of emotions over fact or principle. In just the second week of January, we are presented with the template for what the year ahead holds. It is not looking good, but despite the obvious anxiety, I continue to maintain, is counter-intuitively rather beneficial. The greatest contribution of the constitutional coup to conversations around the grasp of Sri Lanka’s democratic potential was to place in the open and very clearly, who stood for what and where. This endures.
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Lakshman Gunasekara’s Reflections on the Political Turmoil in Late 2018: Three Essays
Lakshman Gunasekera
ONE. Lakshman Gunasekara: “Politics vs Constitutionalism,” in Horizons, 9 December 2018 …
When the Bandaranaike International Memorial Conference Hall (BMICH, what a mouthful) began hosting conferences in those old-fashioned 1970s, we, the ordinary citizens hadn’t a hope of freely strolling into its premises (let alone its halls). One needed a conference invitation to enter the gates and some ‘delegate’ or ‘media’ tag to enter the main hall or ‘committee rooms’ (as they were quaintly termed then). Today, in our lower-middle-income country comfort zone, people are constantly streaming in and out of the BMICH, for weddings, exhibitions, conferences, convocations, concerts and seminars, all at the same time (and I am sure there is romance in those verdant gardens). Continue reading
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Devanesan Nesiah Chastises President Sirisena by returning his Deshamanya Award
ONE = Yohan Perera and Sheain Fernandopulle: Daily Mirror, 3 January 2019, where the ttite is
Former civil servant Devanesan Nesiah officially returned the “Deshamanya” award conferred to him by President Maithripala Sirisena today.Dr. Nesiah and his daughter handed it over to the Presidential Secretariat last evening. Talking to journalists, Dr. Nesiah said he decided to return the award as he was disappointed with the recent actions of the President which created chaos in the country. Dr Nesiah received the Deshamanya in 2017 at a ceremony held to confer national honours. As per the letter he sent to the President earlier, he said his decision isn’t one that he had taken lightly, or in haste.
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