Category Archives: performance

February 20, 2021 · 10:56 am

Tamara’s Letter on Events in Geneva August 2011- June 2012

Email Letter from Tamara Kunanayakam, 20 February 2021 … with highlighting emphais from The Editor, Thuppahi

Dear All,  To set the record straights about my time in Geneva. I was there from August 2011 to June 2012. I covered 2=sessions, September 2011 session and March 2012.
In September 2011 there was a US-Canada draft to put Sri Lanka on the Agenda of HRC’s March 2012 session. The US also tried to have the informal Darusman Report made an official UN document by getting the President of HRC to submit it the Council.

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February 17, 2021 · 1:53 pm

Murugappan Asylum-Seeker Family on Verge of Legal Victory and A Return to Biloela

Nick Pearson in 9news, 16 February 2021, where the title reads “Biloela family spared deportation for now, but remain on Christmas Island”
The Federal Court has stopped the deportation of a family from the Queensland town of Biloela, upholding a decision made in April 2020 which the Department of Home Affairs had sought to have overturned. But Priya and Nades Murugappan and their two young children will remain in Christmas Island Detention Centre for now. The Murugappan family’s lawyer Carina Ford are now considering an appeal to get the family back to their home in Biloela.

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February 8, 2021 · 2:41 pm

Trauma and Joy in Cricket …. and Abusive Lankan Aussies

Ajit Jayasekera — Email Memo to Michael Roberts, 15 February 2021

When we went to Australia for the Tri Nations tournament with England and Australia in December 2002/January 2003, the team was captained by Sanath Jayasuriya and the Coach was Dav Whatmore. We were after a rather disastrous tour of South Africa, where we were roundly beaten in both formats of the game and started this tournament in similar disastrous manner getting smashed by both England and Australia in the opening games.

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February 7, 2021 · 1:23 pm

George Steuarts for Sri Lanka in Mid-March 1996: Moving Heaven and Earth

S. Skandakumar

The semi final was over around ten pm at Eden Garden in Calcutta. Unruly crowd behaviour when all was lost for India ended in the Match Referee Clive Lloyd awarding the game to Sri Lanka on that Tuesday night,   the 14 th of March.1996. I managed to get through to Cricket Board ‘s President Ana Punchihewa in the players dressing room, to convey congratulations and retired to bed truly happy !
We had qualified to play Australia in the Wills World Cup final, at Lahore on Friday 17 th. Just after midnight I had a knock on the door. Bernard Wijetunge and Channa Wijemanne, two of the Directors of our Travel  subsidiary had woken me up for a reason. “Boss we must do a charter for the Final.”

CALCUTTA, INDIA – MARCH 13: Sri Lanka captain and batsman Arjuna Ranatunga picks up some runs during his innings of 35 runs during the 1996 ICC Cricket World Cup semi final against India at Eden Gardens, Kolkata on March 13, 1996. (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Allsport/Getty Images)

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February 5, 2021 · 2:19 pm

Joe Hoad’s Paintings in Celebration of Sri Lanka’s World Cup Triumph 1996

Michael Roberts

One day in 1996 our doorbell rang at Woodlark Grove in the suburb of Glenalta in Adelaide . …. And there was Joe Hoad with two paintings he had composed in celebration of Sri Lanka’s triumph at the World Cup earlier in the year. These products had not been commissioned. They were self-inspired and emanated from his profound joy at the manner in which a little island nation – one that was not unlike his own birthplace of Barbados – had tamed a powerful cricketing force that was a bullyboy in the cricketing politics of the 1990s.

This photograph taken there and then in our back garden marks the moment of the gifting ….. appropriately within an Australian backdrop of the bushfire danger kind. But, unlike that landscape, the paintings are unique. To my mind they are heirlooms. In conjunction with Verite Research and Shamara Wettimuny, I have approached the National Library Services Board in Colombo with the suggestion that they should be placed within its portals in public display with a suitable plaque.[1]

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February 4, 2021 · 3:27 am

A Symbolic Moment of Ethnic Oneness at Independence Day, 4 February 1948

KLF Wijedasa, in The Island, 3 February 2021, with this title “A Historic Day for Ceylon”

Duncan White, Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sharm Mustafa and Oscar Wijesinghe are seen in this picture which appeared in The Ceylon Daily News decades ago. Duncan White, Lakshman Kadirgamar, Oscar Wijesinghe and M.A.M. Sherrif  represented the four communities when they brought four scrolls to the Independence Square to be handed over to the Prime Minister  D.S. Senanayake to be read for the public to hear.

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February 4, 2021 · 12:39 am

Being Aloysian: Reflections from a Galle ‘Boy’ in the Year 1997

Michael Roberts, a reprint

Intrigued by my speech inflections and my appearance, a friend of mine, a teacher in English Literature,[1] made inquiries after my familial background and my ethnic identity within the melange of ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. She learnt that my Barbadian father had related very few stories in his life and times in Barbados and that my sense of West Indianness was muted. This puzzled her. Forced thus into retrospective reflection I now conclude that I lived my youthful life immersed in my everyday activities without much concern for a distinct self-identity of an ethnic sort.

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February 2, 2021 · 11:01 am

Suri Ratnapala enters Debate on the Control of FB and Other Such ‘Engines’

Suri Ratnapala, in The Australian, 2 February 2021, where the title reads thus “Proof of life on social media to screen out evils” …. with highlighting emphahsis imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The suspension of Donald Trump’s accounts by Twitter and Facebook and the shutdown of Parler by Amazon following the events of January 6 heighten concerns about the power of the Big Tech firms to censor political information and debate.

First, a full disclosure. I am a critic of Trump of a classical liberal disposition. I am a social network recluse with only an email account. I believe the silencing of Trump by Facebook and Twitter may have served the immediate public interest but has troubling consequences for liberal democratic government.

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January 31, 2021 · 1:09 pm

Foreign Affairs: The Controversial Interview with Admiral Columbage

Admiral Columbage’s Interview in his capacity as Secretary for Foreign Affairs has drawn a Sharp Critique from Daya Gamage and an Interpretative ‘Dogfight’ between Gamage and Chandre Dharmawardena ….. so this presentation of the FULL COLUMBAGE INTERVIEW is food for thought ….and perhaps more sabre rattling. .… Editor, Thuppahi

Core-group working on SL seeks consensual resolution at UNHRC – Foreign Secretary Admiral Prof. Jayanath Colombage: The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will have its 46th session between February 22 and  March 19. Sri Lanka is on the agenda this time and will come under review based on the resolutions 30/1 adopted in 2015 and two other subsequent rollover resolutions. Sri Lanka co-sponsored these resolutions under the previous government. However, the new government led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa withdrew from co-sponsorship in March, last year. Against the backdrop, Foreign Secretary Admiral Prof. Jayanath Colombage shares his views with Daily Mirror on the preparation for it. Excerpts of the interview with him:
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January 29, 2021 · 2:53 pm

Staunch Christian Witnesses in Sri Lanka Today

Prabhath de Silva in The Daily Mirror, 20 November 2020 with this title “Christians in Sri Lanka Living in harmony amidst challenges after the Easter Terrorist Attacks of 2019 and their contribution to society”

Sri Lanka has attracted the attention of ancient and modern colonial empires, foreign countries, merchants, travellers and missionaries and emissaries over the centuries owing to its strategic and prominent location at a crossroads of maritime routes traversing the Indian Ocean.

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