Category Archives: political demonstrations

Jehan Perera on Channel Four’s Slant on the Easter Sunday Attacks of 2019

Jehan Perera in The Island, 19 September 2019

The Channel 4 documentary that claims to give the story behind the Easter bombing has restarted the debate, within the country, about who was behind the foul deed, and why. The answer is not proving to be simple. It has become the subject of anger, threat and controversy. The identities of the suicide bombers and their victims are known. Eight suicide bombers died. 269 innocent people also died. All of the bombers were Muslim. Some of them were highly educated and came from prosperous families. They would not have wished to sacrifice their lives except for a cause they believed in as being of the utmost importance.

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Hindu Zealots of the RSS target Sri Lanka

PK Balachandran in Email Note to Roberts, late July 2023, with highlighting being my imposition

The RSS  has begun exploiting the Tamil issue to spread its Hindutwa ideology. The idea is to win over the Lankan Tamils to its side by discrediting the secular Tamil identity in SL. None of the speakers listed has any knowledge of the Lankan Tamil issue. Tamil Nadu BJP leader K.Annamalai has already visited Sri Lanka and is trying to put up an RSS-BJP unit here. Very dangerous development. The Sri Lankan government should make certain that Sarath Weerasekara and the monks don’t do anything anti-Hindu. It is sad that this ís happening when India-Lankan relations are improving thanks to the correct policies of Modi and Ranil. Continue reading

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The Bumbling-Rambling JVP Insurgency of 1971

Janaka Perera, in The Daily News, 5 April 2023, entitled “Oh What A Lovely War for the Colonels of CeylonRemembering the April 1971 insurgency – a reporter’s experience,”   …. With this qualifying Note: This however is not meant to be a reflection on JVP’s present-day politics but only a brief recording of history.”

April 5th marks the 52nd anniversary of JVP’s April insurgency of 1971. It saw the first armed insurrection in post-independence Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). All legally recognized political parties at the time cooperated with the then Government in suppressing the insurgency since they did not consider it a people’s uprising.

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For Reflection: Sir John Kotelawala’s Speech at STC Prizegiving in 1954

Mt. Lavinia 1954 Prize Giving-Address by the Right Honourable Sir John Kotelawala, K.B.E., M.P. — with thanks to Harry De Sayrah of Sydney, who added this little preface “When politicians were literate and articulate …………………..” with a few highlights and an arbitrary  selection of photographs inserted by The Editor, Thuppahi 

1954  PRIZE  GIVING.  Presided  by  The  Warden, Canon  R.S.de Saram, MA , OBE.,St. Thomas’  College,  Mt. Lavinia. ……………. *Prime Minister of Ceylon, at the Distribution of Prizes,* …………. *S. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia, Saturday, 31 st July,1954*

When I played for Royal against S. Thomas’ many years ago my intention, which was shared by my team-mates, was to give the Thomians a good drubbing, and, if that was not possible, at least to give them a test of endurance. Much as I value the opportunity which I now have of presiding at your Prize Distribution, I shall endeavour to do neither this afternoon. I mist congratulate the Warden on his Report, which illustrates what opportunities schools like S. Thomas’ have of continuing to play a leading part in the training of our youth and the moulding of their character.

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Confronting Sacrificial Devotion Worldwide, 2004-2012

Michael Roberts

Within the contemporary (2020) context of a few killings in European cities by Islamic jihadists on a journey to martyrdom at the feet of Allah, I happened to see Stephen Sackur’s grilling of a French politician in one of his “Hard Talk” presentations on Channel Four. I was critical of his narrow focus and my reflections led me on a comparative journey where I indicated that the cry of “Allahu Akbar” indicated a sense of self-fulfilment in this their final journey on earth for the perpetrators of such attacks.[1]

 

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Reviewing Horowitz’s Analysis of the Aborted Coup D’etat of January 1962

Michael Roberts, presenting his review article on the study of the abortive 1962 coup plot by elements in the Sri Lanka officer corps by Donald Horowitz: namely, Coup Theories and Officers’ Motives. Sri Lanka in Comparative Perspective, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. This essay was entitled “Brown Sahibs in Universal Suits” and went through a refereeing process and appeared in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 1983 vol 6, pp. 62-77 …………… while the pdf version was converted/retyped for me by Nadeeka Pathuwaaratchchi in the Colombo metropolitan area.

The year 1956 is rightly regarded as a major junction in Sri Lankan history. At the general elections that year, a coalition of parties known as the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP), in which the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was the major partner, achieved a landslide victory. This victory marked a populist upsurge of the vernacular educated and under-privileged mass of the population against the privileged few- a minority which was regarded as being both Westernised and conservative. In particular, the SLFP saw itself as the vanguard and instrument’ of “the common people of [the] country, the rural people” – that is to say, the rural Buddhist Sinhalese-speakıng masses.[1] Interlaced with this movement against privilege was a virulent expression of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. Its demand for a rapid switchover to Sinhala as the language of administration was at once a symbolic statement and an instrumental blow against the old structures of discrimination.[2]

 Mrs B and Felix Dias Bandaranaike                                                                                                                                            

 

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Some Presentations on Independence Day in the Past in Thuppahi

Anusha Palpita in 2016: Independence Day in Black and White Video,” 20 July 2020, https://thuppahis.com/2020/07/30/independence-day-1949-in-black-and-white-video/

Thuppahi 2022: ….. https://thuppahis.com/2022/11/21/eureka-the-film-clip-of-the-1949-independence-day-festivities-secured/

KLF Wijedasa: “A Symbolic Moment of Ethnic Oneness,” 4 February 2021, https://thuppahis.com/2021/02/04/a-symbolic-moment-of-ethnic-oneness-at-independence-day-4-february-1948/

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Bracegirdle’s Anti-Slavery Struggle as Depicted by Robert Gunawardena

Translation by Vinod Moonesinghe from Robert Gunawardena’s “Memoirs of Bracegirdle” … 1.44  to 

Robert Gunawardena 

Mark Anthony Bracegirdle

“Bracegirdle’s anti-slavery struggle”

In April 1937, a remarkable incident took place which strengthened the anti-imperialist struggle and aroused the interest of the masses. That is, the Bracegirdle Incident which is spoken about by older people to this day.

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Crunchtime: Resolving Sri Lanka’s Political Dilemma

Chandre Dharmawardana, in The Island, 02 January 2023 where the preferred title runs thus: Using SORTITION to prevent electing of same crooks to parliament”

The terrorism of the LTTE ended in May 2009, and most Sri Lankans looked forward to a dawn of peace, reconciliation and progress.  Even Poongkothai Chandrahasan, the granddaughter of SJV Chelvanayagam could state that ‘what touched me the most that day was that these were poor people with no agenda ~ wearing their feelings on their sleeves~. Every single person I spoke to said to me, “The war is over, we are so happy”. They were not celebrating the defeat of the Tamils. They were celebrating the fact that now there would be peace in Sri Lanka’ (The Island, 23rd August 2009, http://archive.island.lk/2009/08/23/news15.html).

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Adolf Hitler’s Logic

Courtesy of Richard Koenigsberg in New York

HITLER: “If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without regret over the spilling of precious German blood, then I naturally also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin.” …..

Adolf Hitler raises a defiant, clenched fist during a speech.

circa 1933: German Dictator, Adolf Hitler addressing a rally in Germany. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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