Category Archives: human rights

A Mind For One and All: Jayantha Dhanapala

Tissa Jayatilaka, in The Island, 4 June 2023,  … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The splendid career and the many glittering prizes won by Jayantha Dhanapala is common knowledge and does not require reiteration here. Rather I wish to focus on the man himself in this tribute to an exceptional person whom I had the privilege of getting to know personally at the tail end of the 1980s – I had of course heard of Jayantha and his many accomplishments long before our first meeting. Having read a newspaper review of North-South Perspectives, an international affairs journal that I edited, which focused on the promotion of greater understanding between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ world, Jayantha telephoned me to ask if we could meet. I readily agreed and thus began a friendship that lasted until his death a few days ago.

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Combating The Damages of War & Accident: Artificial Limbs for One & All … In Lanka

CHRONOLOGY BACKWARDS

https://thuppahis.com/2021/07/24/dr-susiri-weerasekera-a-sturdy-servant-of-humankind/

https://thuppahis.com/2019/10/04/dr-susiri-weerasekera-a-man-for-all-seasons/

Dr Weerasekera standing 2nd from right facing us with a visiting dignitary at the Friend-in-Need Society building in Colombo Continue reading

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Autism & Its Awesome Weight: The ECSAT Intervention in Galle

Michael Roberts

Parents and families who are burdened wth the care of children with advanced degrees of AUTISM have to cope with burdens unimaginable (and some parents do manage to extend unbelievable degrees of love and attention to their progeny — as I winessed a few years back in the course of a field visit with Roshan Samarawickrama of ECSAT in Galle: see  ……………………………………….. https://thuppahis.com/2020/09/08/outreach-ecsat-aid-for-the-totally-impaired/.

 

In early April this year I was able to witness and photograph one of the special sessions that ECSAT conducts for autistic children and teenagers  at their headquarters every now and then. This task demands one on one aid and encouragement for each and every child/teenager by trained ECSAT aides (mostly female). My pictorial snaps of this work were deemed too amateurish for public display (my assessment). I now have the benefit of professional photographs sent to me by Lakshika De Silva of ECSAT.

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USA’s Double Standards: A Payback Today for Sri Lanka’s Refusal to Kow-Tow in 2009

Item in the DAILY MIRROR, 28 April 2023… with this title “Designating Karannagoda; Russia hits back at US: Says West should not interfere in other countries affairs”

 The United States has designated former Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda, for his alleged involvement in gross violations of human rights. The US State Department said that Karannagoda has been designated pursuant to Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2023, due to his involvement in a gross violation of human rights during his tenure as a Naval Commander. As a result of today’s action, Karannagoda and his wife, Srimathi Ashoka Karannagoda, are ineligible for entry into the United States.

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The LTTE and Their Sacrificial Devotion to Cause

Michael Roberts on his Essays on this Theme within the Global Context ………… https://thuppahis.com/2017/07/21/sacrificial-devotion-how-i-entered-this-terrain/…. JULY 21, 2017 · …………..“Sacrificial Devotion” — How I Entered This Terrain

 

 Tiger fighters relax in camp, late 1980sPic by Shyam Tekwani who was embedded with LTTE for a while.

With the benefit of a Teen Murti Fellowship I was collecting data on communal violence in India in 1995 when my readings of news archives indicated that the death of Mrs Indira Gandhi by assassination in Delhi induced a handful of individuals in southern India to commit sympathetic suicide. Since news reports did not indicate similar reactions in other parts of India, I began to reflect on the cultural foundations that promoted such expressions – acting, of course, in contexts that also could provide political and economic inspirations. This eventually led to my first essay on this topic: “Filial Devotion and the Tiger Cult of Suicide,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, 1996, 30: 245-72.

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The Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka …. & Their Travails

Shamara Wettimuny in Financial Times, 12 April 2023 … with highlighting added by The Editor, Thuppahi

On a muggy Friday afternoon, the auditorium of the National Library of Sri Lanka slowly filled with an eager audience from Colombo, the Hill Country and beyond. It was the launch of a book by Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Mythri Jegathesan, of Santa Clara University.

Maithir Jegathesan

Her book, a work on and of solidarity with the Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka, ‘Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Post-war Sri Lanka’ was originally published by the University of Washington Press in 2019 to widespread acclaim. It was awarded the 2020 Diane Forsyth Prize for the best book featuring feminist anthropology research and in 2021, it won the Michelle Z. Rosaldo Book Prize for its significant contribution to feminist anthropology.

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Discernment: The Tulana Resource Centre at Kelaniya Fostering Discernment

TULANA is a Sri Lanka Jesuit Province Apostolate mandated by the Superiors and founded in 1974 by its current Director, the Asian Jesuit Theologian, Indologist and Buddhist Scholar, Fr. Aloysius Pieris, s.j.

“The name TULANA has its roots in Sanskrit and means four things taken together: elevation, weighing, comparing and deciding for the weightier things – in short DISCERNMENT.”

Revd Aloysius Peiris, s.j.

 Its primary founding motivation was as a response to two challenges – the challenge of the spirituality and philosophy of Sri Lanka’s major religion, Buddhism, and the challenge of the socio-political aspirations of the highly educated but marginalised rural youth.

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Sri Lankan Military in Judicial Gunsights Over May 2009 Incidents

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.

 

 

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Sri Lankan Armed Forces vs the Tamil Tigers: The Last Phase

Serge De Silva Ranasinghe, in The Diplomat, 20 May 2010,*** where the title runs thus “Reflections on the Tigers”

A year after the LTTE’s defeat, evidence shows criticism of Sri Lanka’s army is misplaced, says Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe.

Tamil civilians reach safety across Nandhikadal Lagoon —Pix by SL army

 

 

A year ago this week, the Sri Lankan government officially declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in one of the most extraordinary counter-insurgency campaigns in recent times.

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The “Truth Tigers” Documentary of May 2002

Truth Tigers – Sri Lanka  ….. Journeyman Pictures

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27 May 2002 Blood drips off the deck; a torrent of rapid gunfire sores through the air. We are in the midst of a savage sea battle, fought by the Sea Tigers — the maritime arm of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Produced by ABC Australia Distributed by Journeyman Pictures

 

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