Godfrey Gunatilleke…… Three poems from Time’s Confluence and other poems (Colombo, Unie Arts, 2014 … ISBN 978 -955-41102-0-5)
BURNING ……(Elegy on a body seen burning by the roadside during the violence in 1989)
There was no one, none at all to weep for him
Dead, lying by the roadside, quietly burning;
No friend, no brother, just some strangers, fearful
And silent. No love was left for mourning. Continue reading
Filed under accountability, atrocities, cultural transmission, ethnicity, fundamentalism, JVP, literary achievements, nationalism, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes, zealotry
I: Editorial: “Black July 83 never again,” 21 July 2013
Remember Black July ’83’ is a print-ad campaign designed by the advertising agency JWT for the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a controversial NGO that has come in for a lot of flak from multiple quarters on grounds of financial dishonesty and aiding and abetting separatism. ‘Never to repeat’ is the payoff line. The campaign is to be launched shortly, The Nation learns. ‘Black July’ is remembered and remembered differently and for varying purposes by those who remember. Whatever these differences may be there is commonality in agreement on one thing: it should never happen again.
A Scene in Borella–Pic from Victor Ivan
There’s nothing to say that ‘Black July’ will not recur. There’s nothing to say that it must. On the other hand, if it is not to happen again, it is important to remember what happened. It is important to acknowledge that it inflicted a deep wound on the nation, the people who make it, their collective and individual memory; a wound that has bled into many other lacerations. This has been a common view expressed by many across the political spectrum. Continue reading
Shelagh Goonewardene
Ernest McIntyre
The ancient land of Lanka emerged as a modern state when, as Ceylon, it was granted Independence in February 1948 by Britain who had been the last imperial power to rule it following the Portuguese and Dutch. This meant a recognition and re-emergence of its own identity after approximately four hundred years of foreign rule. It is a matter of history that violent episodes initiated by civilians and even the waging of war by the state have accompanied the founding of several postcolonial modern Asian states such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka, the country this paper will focus on, armed insurrections planned and executed by disillusioned and disgruntled youth took place in 1971 and during the period 1987-1990 which had nothing to do with the birth-pangs of gaining independence but everything to do with the policies and politics practised by the main political parties which affected education and economic development. The objective of this discourse is to highlight both politics and history as it can, and has been, effectively dramatized in the theatre by commenting on the theatre of that particular time in Sri Lankan history. Included is the detailed examination of an re-enactment of that period in a play which was written in 2009. Continue reading
thuppahi
