Category Archives: patriotism

Australia’s Deep Shit! New Zealand Shuns AUKUS

Raucous Aucous … with highlighting imposed by Thuppahi

A:  A Report from New Zealand: (see news headline in Appendix).  They are not interested in Aukus or Quad and wish to keep right out of it which is ironic as the Philippines, an Asian country, wants to dig their noses right in it.

Former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark says, “New Zealand interests do not lie in being associated with Aukus” because it would damage their foreign policy, which is a very strong statement.

Unlike the Philippines, New Zealand is not aligned with the US military, nor does it wish to do so. That will irritate Australia as well.

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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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Incarceration Camps in the Pacific Theatre of World War II Deciphered

Anoma Pieris presents her work on “Pacific War Incarceration Camps” . to the world 

While there have been many excellent studies on colonial penal environments in the Asia Pacific region, mainly prisons, very few scholars have approached the wartime internment and prisoner of war camps associated with the Pacific War as comparable carceral spaces that might offer deeper insights into imperial and national forms of political sovereignty and border conflict. There are few comparative studies across geographical areas or imperial regimes. Sarah Kovner’s book Prisoners of Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps (Harvard University Press 2020), though focused on Japanese military imperialism, is important for that focus, and increasingly, several anthologies have offered us a similar analytical breadth by juxtaposing numerous national perspectives. The Architecture of Confinement: Incarceration Camps of the Pacific War (Cambridge University Press, 2022) is similarly ambitious in its scope. It uses the arc of the Pacific Basin to frame a comparative study including Australia, Singapore, North America and Japan as important nodal points in the wartime incarceration camp geography. Its aim is to investigate the impact of the war on settler societies, more so than on the imperial contestants dominating both theatres of World War II.

Anoma Pieris and Lynne Horiuchi at former Cowra POW Camp site in 2016 … photo: Anoma Pieris.

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TW Roberts R.I.P. ……. July 1976

A Vale in[1] Appreciation, From Miss Norah Roberts                                                                                                            Fort, Galle,  10th July 1976

Letter to: The Editor, “Sunday Observer”, Colombo

  T.W.ROBERTS ……………………………. An Appreciation[2]

At the age of 17 my father, Thomas Webb Roberts won the Barbados Scholarship from Queens College, Barbados, and entered the Oxford University where he passed both the Classical Mods and Grates in the first class before he was 21. He topped the list in the open competition for the Colonial Civil Service. He also found time to get married when he was only 18, to my mother[3] who was also 18. When he came out to the C.C.S. at 21 he had 3 children, Isabella, T.F.C and G. C. Roberts.[4]

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People Inbetween: Ethnic & Class Prejudices in British Ceylon

Michael RobertsContent of His Talk on this topic at the National Trust in Colombo in June 2018 

The National Trust’s brief was for me to present motifs from the book People Inbetween. The Burghers and the Middle Class in the Transformations within Sri Lanka, 1790-1960s, (Ratmalana, Sarvodaya Book Publishing Services, 1989) and more specifically its first chapter viz. “Pejorative Phrases: the Anti-colonial Response and Sinhala Perceptions of the Self through Images of the Burghers” 

Many think People Inbetween is a history of the Burghers. Not so. It is multi-faceted. It describes (a) the rise of the middle class in British times, an influential force within which the Burghers were a critical element and a vanguard in the questioning of British rule; (b) the initial strands in the development of Ceylonese nationalism and (c) the development of Colombo into a metropolitan hub that became the island’s hegemonic centre.

 

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Danger! Danger! Read All About IT !!! Ye Australians

A good friend of Malaysia and Indonesia currently on the Black Sea … with a title and highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

A:  Paul Keating released this statement today saying the AUKUS arrangements represent “the worst international decision by a Labor government” since Billy Hughes introduced conscription.  Very strong words here, highly critical of his own party – a betrayal in fact.

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Paul Keating Eviscerates AUKUS Pact and Aussie Warmongers

Former prime minister Paul Keating examines the merits of the AUKUS submarine deal and its implications for China-Australia relations and regional stability.

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Resisting the British Imperial Forces: Tales Today in Uva Wellassa

Chandani Kirinde, in Sunday Times, March 2023. where the title runs thus: “Pride and tears of Uva Wellassa”

200 years after what is considered one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of colonial rule here, Chandani Kirinde visits the area that saw an uprising by its people that was brutally crushed by the British

A British cannon recovered from Wellassa. Pix by Indika Handuwala

The awe-inspiring cloud covered mountains, lush forests, formidable waterfalls and clear streams of Uva Wellassa bear little testimony today to the darkest and bloodiest chapter in the country’s history under British rule.  There is little sign of the burnt hamlets, scorched paddy fields, broken tank bunds, felled trees and the skeletons of the thousands of men, women and children killed or starved to death when the military might of the coloniser was turned on the population of the Kandyan provinces to put down a rebellion against British rule.

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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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Louis F. Obeyesekere: An Empire Loyalist who went down when the “Ciotat” was sunk by an U-Boat

This article was originally written and published by Louis Frederick Obeyesekere’s great grandnephew, Sheannal Anthony Obeyesekere at: https://medium.com/@serendibrising/  …..  Item taken from SerendibRising, 3 March 2023, entitled  “Louis Frederick Obeyesekere: Lost out at sea on Christmas Eve” … sent to Thuppahi by Quintus Andradi

Louis Frederick (Freddy) J. Wijeratne Obeyesekere was born in the early 1890s. He was the forth and youngest child of Mudaliyar Henry Ferdinandus Wijeratne Obeyesekere and Henrietta Isabel (Ellen) Perera Wijesinha Goonetillaka¹ who had married in 1881 at All Saints ChurchGalle.

                                                            F Obeyesekere’s name is engraved on the Cenotaph War Memorial at Viharamahadevi Park, Colombo. Photo credits: Mithila Gunathilake and Quintus Andradi

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