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.”
The Debate in the House of Lords in the UKon “The Truth and Recpncilaition Commission in Sri Lanka”
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).
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 1stwhich 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).
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.
Dennis B. McGilvray, in India Review 5(2-3) November 2006, special issue on public anthropology, …. where the title reads “Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka: An Anthropologist Confronts the Real World” …. with highlighting in different colours imposed by the Editor, Thuppahi
Recent calls for a new “public anthropology” to promote greater visibility for ethnographic research in the eyes of the press and the general public, and to bolster the courage of anthropologists to address urgent issues of the day, are laudable although probably too hopeful as well. Yet, while public anthropology could certainly be more salient in American life, it already exists in parts of the world such as Sri Lanka where social change, ethnic conflict, and natural catastrophe have unavoidably altered the local context of ethnographic fieldwork. Much of the anthropology of Sri Lanka in the last three decades would have to count as “public” scholarship, because it has been forced to address the contemporary realities of labor migration, religious politics, the global economy, and the rise of violent ethno-nationalist movements. As a long-term observer of the Tamil-speaking Hindu and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka’s eastern coastal region, I have always been attracted to the classic anthropological issues of caste, popular religion, and matrilineal kinship. However, in the wake of the civil wars for Tamil Eelam and the 2004 tsunami disaster, I have been forced to confront (somewhat uneasily) a fundamentally altered fieldwork situation.This gives my current work a stronger flavor of public anthropology, while providing an opportunity for me to trace older matrilocal family patterns and Hindu-Muslim religious traditions under radically changed conditions.
In a recent email message, a good friend of mine residing in Sri Lanka, Richard Simon, contended that he was “particularly concerned to open Facebook this morning and find two posts sharing Thuppahi articles.” One of these references was to the item “Is Sri Lanka Creating a Dungeon for Itself?”
Fair Dinkum, with this sub-title “UN resolutions reveal the West is opposed to international democracy, while it tries to block attempts directed against racism and Xenophobia”
The UN Human Rights Council has just concluded its 51st session, adopting 41 resolutions and decisions. Examining the way countries vote on these resolutions reveals much about the hypocrisy of Western values, and that all their talk of democracy, equity, and valuing human rights is just meaningless rhetoric – a fact that can be observed in two important resolutions just passed by the UNHRC.
Elmo Jayawardena, in The Island, 4 March 2021, where the title reads “A Clear Blue Sky” … bearing this ’emphasis’…. I publish this article just so that we can remember how sad the times were during the war for both sides. Let us hope and pray such will never happen again)
The one unforgettable memory that Selva always carried within himself was the colour of the vast Jaffna sky, spotless and shimmering in brilliant blue. It appeared as if the Gods had decided to spread a sheet and tucked it taut to the corners of the horizon as if to show off how perfectly they could do things. Off and on there would be fluffy white clouds, being sheep-dogged by winds aloft, harmless cartoons scattered in the sky, men and dogs, trees and castles or whatever a child wanted to imagine them to be. The clouds were seldom grey and laden with rain. That’s how the dry climate came about to roast the soil where Selva’s family toiled under the merciless sun, for generations, to grow chilli on. The kochika as they called it, were the thin and long kind, blood red, extremely hot and mouth-burning. Selva’s people sold the chilli harvest at the week-end market in the closest town. That was Vaddukodai, located an hour’s distance away, by bullock cart, from their nameless village of nowhere and no one; just blood red kochika and blue skies.
Volunteers sort food into food parcels at the Rumney Forum community charity on November 8, 2022 in Cardiff, Wales. © 2022 Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
