ONE -A: Jeewaka Dias, 23 March 2021 …. with coloured emphasis added by The Editor, Thuppahi, whereas ‘black’ is the authors
Cuba is one of the most admired countries in the Global South. Cuba stood up for Sri Lanka at UNHRC, with a speech calling for defiance and resistance. These are the hallmark attributes of Cuba which have won global admiration.
Sri Lanka is on the right side of history. With China as an ally and support of the rest of Asia (bar one – South Korea) which did not vote in favour of the Resolution against Sri Lanka, the signs are clear of the Global Split. Between the rapacious Colonial countries of the Global North and ex-colonies of the Global South.
Two suspects involved in LTTE propaganda activity was taken into custody while distributing posters in Jaffna in March 2014. Following investigations conducted by law enforcement officers, they trailed a known ex-LTTE cadre by the name of Gobi who had escaped the Vavuniya Welfare Centre after the end of the conflict. The suspect was hiding in a house in Kilinochchi and when the team went to arrest him, he opened fire on the team and an officer was injured. The house he was hiding in was searched and an F-3 type metal detector was found. Investigations further revealed that they were to use this metal detector to find arms and explosives dumped by the LTTE. This metal detector had been stolen from an NGO involved in demining operations in the east of Vavuniya. Thevihan, Gobi and Appan Continue reading →
Dr. Sanjiva Wijesinha, launched his latest book “Not our War” at his ancestral home in Colombo ‘Lakmahal’ this week amongst a distinguished gathering of old school mates, relatives and family friends. Old Thomian Rakhita Jayawardena introduced the book at the launch together with Publisher Vijitha Yapa. Brigadier Bahar Morseth, President Sri Lanka Ex-Service and Police Association (Australia) has written the foreword to the book where he refers to Dr. Wijesinha’s services as an army doctor in both Sri Lanka and Australia. Dr. Wijesinha has dedicated the book to his friends and colleagues, soldiers as well as civilians who lost their lives during Sri Lanka’s war years between 1983 and 2009. Continue reading →
1a = 21,051 from 27 Nov. 1982 [Shankar] – 6 June 2008 ………………………………………………of which 4,535 or 21.5 % were female.[1]
1b = ??? 13,000 as a guess for rest of the period June 2008-end 2009… ……………………………………………………….making a total of ………….34,000 perhaps?
2 = 22,247 cadres (with 11,812 identified by name duringEelam War IValone[2]
3 = thereby suggesting that the total Liberation Tiger losses for the whole period 1982-2009 could even add up to 40,000 (being 22,000 for E-War IV and roughly 18,000 in the three previous phases of war) Continue reading →
On November 28th, 2012, a special screening of Ini Avan (Him, Here After), Asoka Handagama’s latest movie, was organized at Club Lincoln, in Paris, by Heliotrope Films. Premiered at Cannes 2012 as one of the films under the Association of Independent Cinema ACID (l’Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion), Ini Avan has been listed in some of the most prestigious film festivals in the world during the past months including Toronto, Edinburg, Tokyo, Hanoi. Continue reading →
Sean Parnell, in The Australian, 31 July 2012, where the title is “AFP rejected refugee offer to name names”
AN accused backer of Tamil terrorists held in custody in Melbourne for the past four years tried to strike a deal with US and Australian authorities in a desperate bid to avoid being returned to Sri Lanka.The former head of the Melbourne International College, Thulasitharan Santhirarajah, was arrested in 2008 after a series of raids by the AFP, acting on behalf of the FBI.
The Australian yesterday revealed Attorney-General Nicola Roxon in February signed off on the extradition of Santhirarajah, who is accused of providing support to the now-vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. At the time of his arrest, Mr Santhirarajah, now 38, was living in Melbourne with his wife — an ethnic Tamil previously granted refugee status — and their son. He had moved to Australia on a business visa and was granted a bridging visa while he sought permanent residency. Continue reading →
Michael Roberts, courtesy of Groundviews, where it was presented on 28 October 2011, and where some blog comments will be found
Whatever the death toll during the last stages of Eelam War IV in 2009 the official government data in that year acknowledged that 11,696 (9078 male and 2024 female)[1] of those who survived had identified themselves or been identified as members of the LTTE — whether combatants or active functionaries. There were others who had been arrested elsewhere in the island (that is beyond the battlefields), often on flimsy evidence, in the years 2006-09. Muralidhar Reddy stresses that “once bracketed in the category of a combatant, irrespective of the degree of their involvement in the war, there was no mechanism for those detained to prove their innocence.”[2]
Distribution of Certificates-30 Oct 2011–Pic by BCGR
In parenthesis let me add that grapevine information from Tamil sources indicate that in April-May 2009 quite a few Tigers seem to have successfully merged themselves with the population that was deemed civilian and placed in the IDP camps in Menik Farm and elsewhere. Several commentators with some familiarity with the IDP camps have indicated that these detention centres were like the proverbial colander and that a significant number – estimates vary widely from 1,000 to 10,000 — slipped out of the IDP camps in mid-2009 and found their way abroad. It is alleged that at least 500 of this lot were “hardcore LTTE.”[3]Continue reading →
The anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983 in the southern reaches of Sri Lanka stirred me to the bone: generating anger and depression in alternate moods as I ruminated from a distance in Australia in the mid-1980s. Much later, when on study leave in Lanka in 1991, I picked up testimonies and tales about specific incidents of killing and threat during those dark days in Colombo, including one relating to the killing of Arumanaiyagam, a former young colleague.
When I flew from Katunayake to Charlottesville inVirginia for the second stage of my leave on a semester fellowship, it was in a particular mood that I sat in the planes and reflected upon that horrible occasion. The relative isolation of my quarters in Charlottesville suited that mood. It was there that I penned “The agony and the ecstasy of a pogrom: southern Lanka, July 1983” – a literary essay rather than a social science document, one that amounted to a personal statement of protest and anguish.
This essay eventually appeared in an anthology of my essays, namely, “The agony and the ecstasy of a pogrom: southern Lanka, July 1983,” in Roberts, Exploring Confrontation. Sri Lanka. Politics, Culture and History, Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994, pp. 317-27. An invaluable facet of this presentation was the inclusion of two photographs from the Tamil Times of November 1983 depicting mob scenes at Borella Junction on the night of 24/25th July 1983. Extracted from the poor reproductions in the Tamil Times, these photographs would have made a fastidious cameraperson squirm because they lacked sharp definition. But the definition was good enough to reveal striking content – content of the sort that would make viewers squirm because of the inhumanity of man-upon-man they revealed to all and sundry. Better versions of these pictures that are now reproduced within this post would already have bought this point home to readers. Continue reading →
Courtesy of the Sunday Observer, 2 October 2011 where the title is “Tamil, Sinhala or Muslims of Wanni long for Alternative Leadership”
Web Editor’s Note: While the appearance of this news rport in translation form the Thinakaran in a government-run newspaper may generate scepticism, I think this is ahighly significant representation from hard-earned expereince. I stress here that I have myself sought information on conditions in Thamililam in the period 1995-2009 inclusive of the ceasefire stages with an eye on the degree of support for the LTTE. My information garnered thus far is fragmentary, but Anoma Rajakruna was working intermittently on the topic of female empowerment in LTTE land in the mid-2000s and indicated that the poltical sentiments of people were constrained by the degree to which their family networks depended on the LTTE dispensation for daily livelihood — precisely the message conveyed by Murgesu the teacher. One should also attend to the title of the book conveeing NBen Bavinck’s diary record, namely, Of Tamils and Tigers and the evidence that is presented on the years 1989-1992 in Volume One. Michael Roberts
Any Tamil who lived through the horrors and unimaginable human sufferings during the last battle at Mullivaikkal in Mullaitivu would never even dream of leading the Tamils in the path of another war. The bitter memory of it is indelibly registered in the minds of the people of the Vanni and it is they who directly encountered the dire consequences, burdens and untold sufferings caused by that last battle. Nor do they have any right to talk about the last stages of that bitter battle. Anyone who witnessed the happenings of May 19 will never think of forcing the Tamils into another war”– So said an emotionally-charged Vanni resident Ariyakutty Murugesu, one time teacher and the father of two former LTTE women cadres. He was one among those who suffered and experienced the heart-rending tragedies and miseries of the last battle. He is a man of an intellectual calibre. He was a teacher at several schools in the Northern peninsula and had also worked as a freelance journalist, including for the Lake House publication .
Speaking out his mind in a brief interview with Thinakaran, our Tamil language daily, he said that the war was forced on the people of Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and Mannar and they had to Continue reading →
