Category Archives: political demonstrations

December 11, 2022 · 6:14 pm

Bracegirdle’s AntI-Slavery Struggle in British Ceylon, 1937

A Section translated  from Robert Gunawardena, Satanaka Satahan, Kosgama: 2007, Vijith Gunawardena: ….. provided here by Vinod Moonesinghe  …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

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

 Mark Antony Lyster Bracegirdle, an Australian, came to Lanka in December 1936 to gain appointment as the assistant superintendant of a tea estate owned by a British plantation company. It is possible that the plantation company which appointed him to this position did not know that he had been a young member of the Australian Communist Party. Having come to Lanka, Bracegirdle took up his duties in a tea estate not far from Madulkele, beyond Katugastota.

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November 21, 2022 · 12:01 am

Eureka! The Film Clip of the 1949 Independence Day Festivities Secured

The heroes of this enterprise in retrieving the film clip produced by the Government Film Unit (aka GFU) are James Blake Jnr of Germany and Anusha Palpita & Arun Dias Bandaranaike of Lanka. The relevant details are indicated in a Memo from James emailed to me recently…..  Michael Roberts in Australia, 20 November 2022

A NOTE from James Blake sent from Colombo in late October 2022:

Hi Michael: Please see below for the two links to the FILM CLIP produced by the Government Film Unit.

Note: the Source-1 clip was from an OLD post on your Thuppahis blog: dated 30 July 2020.

Note: the Source-2 clip surfaced when I did an additional YouTube ‘search’.

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November 10, 2022 · 3:22 pm

The Suriya Mal Campaign of the 1930s and Doreen Wickremasinghe nee Young

An Item at Roar.lk, where the title reads “We must remember Suriya Mal, even in this era of Manel Mal”

Doreen Wickremasinghe was a British leftist who became a prominent Communist politician in Sri Lanka and a Member of Parliament (MP). She was one of the handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka.

Doreen & the Rodi lass she ‘rescued’

Doreen Wickremasinghe was the daughter of two British ‘ethical Socialists’. While a student in London in the 1920s, she became involved in the India League and carried out other anti-imperialist work. Here she met Dr S.A. Wickremasinghe, then a radical Sri Lankan moving in Communist and radical circles while a post-graduate student in London.

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October 24, 2022 · 11:49 pm

The Machinations of Vellala Lawyer Leaders that Deepened Tamil-Sinhala Divisions from the 1920s-to-the-1960s

Sebastian Rasalingam, reproducing an article presented in 2008 in The Sri Lanka Guardian in October 2008 with this title “An Excellent and Timely Feature on the Tamils” **

 Please permit me to make some comments on the recent article on the “Sri Lankan Identity” by R. M. B. Senanayake, continuing a discussion in a previous article by Anne Abeysekera. Both these articles, written by authors who are familiar with the English-educated Sinhalese point of view, deal very inadequately with the issues of Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka and in erstwhile Ceylon. In fact, the modern generation, even the Tamils, are on the whole unaware of the true nature of the present conflict and the role of Tamil nationalism. They are misled and mesmerized by simplistic histories concocted by the great political agenda set in motion by the Tamil leaders of the pre-1956 era. In fact, I will outline below how the battlelines were drawn in the Donoughmore days, by G. G. Ponnambalam (GGP) and others who followed.

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October 22, 2022 · 8:24 pm

Galle Face Green in Colombo Over the Decades

Ismeth Raheem and Angeline Ondaatjie, in Elanka, 10 October 2022, where the title runs as “The Changing Face of Galle Face Green”

Galle Face is Colombo’s most-prized open-aired public space, extending over a mile along the Fort oceanfront in Colombo. Over the course of Sri Lanka’s history, it has been the de facto stage for landmark public gatherings. Most recently over the months of April to July 2022, the Galle Face Green was the centerstage of the People’s Aragalaya, a protest movement that arose from economic hardship in Sri Lanka.  During those weeks the protestors renamed it GotaGoGama (GGG) and even had a Google marker to prove it.  On July 9th 2022, unprecedented crowds from all parts of Sri Lanka gathered in the Galle Face Area breaking attendance records of Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake funeral in 1952, the 1953 hartal, and Pope Francis’s holy mass in 2015.

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September 24, 2022 · 1:45 am

Deeply Wounded. Also Divided? Sri Lanka Today

Neloufer De Mel, in History Today, Vol 72/8, September 2022, where the title reads “Sri Lanka’s Deep Wounds” **

On 31 March 2022 a public protest occurred in the vicinity of the home of the Sri Lankan president Gotabhaya Rajapakse. The protest marked frustration at the shortages of essential commodities (gas, medicines, fuel) and the gruelling ten-to-13-hour power cuts imposed by a cash-strapped government with insufficient dollars to pay for imported fuel. The protestors also sought answers as to why certain neighbourhoods (such as Mirihana, where the president lived) continued to enjoy uninterrupted power.

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September 19, 2022 · 8:44 pm

Multi-faceted Campaign against the SL Government Crackdown on the Aragalaya

HRW …. 31 August 2022 …………. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/08/31/sri-lanka-end-use-terrorism-law-against-protesters 

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August 25, 2022 · 10:33 am

A Sturdy Lankan Student Protest Petition, 22 August 2022

A PETITION: Stop Labelling Student Protestors as Terrorists. 22 August 2022

We are a group of feminists writing to call urgent attention to the extra-constitutional attempts of the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) to suppress dissent. Lacking a popular mandate, hunting down student protestors and activists, including a LGBTIQ activist has become a central strategy of the political élite to retain power. The latest move by the GoSL is to brand three student leaders and the student union they represent, the Inter University Student Federation (IUSF), as ‘terrorists’.

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August 22, 2022 · 1:04 am

Irony. Defiance. Salman Rushdie’s Appreciation of the Everyday within the Heat of the Fatwa

Fintan O’Toole, in The Irish Times, 15 August 2022, where the title runs “The first time I met Salman Rushdie, the very idea of it was unimaginable”  ………..  reproduced here with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi   &*&

The first time I met Salman Rushdie, the very idea of meeting Salman Rushdie was unimaginable. It was after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against him. Rushdie had disappeared from the face of the earth.

By refusing to subsist in living death they prescribed for him, the author stood up for life itself as the ordinary human birthright.

 

 

I went to a party in County Wicklow. Seeing him standing in the kitchen with a glass of wine was like meeting Lazarus.

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August 20, 2022 · 9:13 pm

Wickremasinghe: President & Strongman? Reprehensible Acts

Andrew Fidel Fernando, in The Indian Express,  18 August 2022, where the title reads thus “New Sri Lankan president is focused on protecting upper-class interests” … with highlighting here being impositions from The editor Thuppahi

As if acting out the first half-page of a “How to be a Despot” pocketbook, President Ranil Wickremesinghe has spent his first weeks in Sri Lanka’s highest office beating down and rounding up protesters, while the nation continues to gasp for its barest necessities.

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