Category Archives: prabhakaran

Word Pictures in Deciphering Sri Lankan History, Politics, War

Jonathon Riley, reviewing Michael Naseby: Sri Lanka. Paradise Lost. Paradise Regained, 2020, London, Unicorn

Sri Lanka, Ceylon – geographically so close to the Indian sub-continent and yet with a culture and history that has been for many centuries distinct. What a difference a few miles of water make – as we in England know well. I recall visiting Sri Lanka in 1993 and, on the anniversary of independence in 1948, and reading a leader in the newspaper that suggested maybe it would have been a good idea to have stayed with Britain a few years longer. A brave sentiment indeed and one which, after more than twenty years, makes much more sense having read Michael Naseby’s book.

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Profound Insights into Sri Lanka’s Tempestuous History

Royston Ellis, in Sunday Times UK in March 2020 where the title of his review reads  “For anyone interested in Sri Lanka, its politics and human nature”  

Lord Naseby (right) with Royston Ellis outside the House of Lords

This book by Lord Naseby, who lived in Sri Lanka from 1963 to 1964 when he was Michael Morris and an eager South Asian Marketing Manager for Reckitt & Colman, has a cover with an eye-catching red spine proclaiming “Sri Lanka in large type. It is clearly designed to attract bookshop browsers and to ensure that it becomes a prominent addition to an enthusiast’s collection of contemporary literature about Sri Lanka. Continue reading →

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Pictorial Angles in Michael Naseby’s Tale of His Engagements with Sri Lanka, 1963-to-today

Michael Naseby’s Sri Lanka. Paradise Lost. Paradise Regained is on the market was originally due to be launched in Colombo in early April — an event knocked on the solar plexus by the Corona-virus pandemic. We will need time to acquire reviews of this large book; but let me spark interests among lap-dogs as well as cynics by presenting a election of its illustrations.

Michael Morris with family friend Mrs Veena Talwatte … & iron cages used by the LTTE for their prisoners. Continue reading →

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When Vengeance drives Human Rights Recrimination on the World Stage: The Ban Ki-moon Story

Michael Roberts

As the annual witch-hunt directed at Sri Lanka from the UNHRC at Geneva looms, we can benefit from recalling the role of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, in this pantomime. Ban Ki-moon is a South Korean who has been identified as “a lackey” of USA in the same category as Kofi Annan by the Canadian activist Chris Black in an email communication on 20th January 2020. Ban Ki-moon and the UN Rehabilitation Commissioner, Navy Pillai were behind the selection of Marzuki, Sooka and Ratner to man the UN Panel of Investigation whose report has served as the foundation for the campaign mounted by the UNHCR offices in Geneva to hound Sri Lanka for human rights abuses.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (r) is greeted by IDPs (Internaly Displaced Percons) as he visits Manik Farm in Sri Lanka on May 23, 2009.
AFP PHOTO/JOE KLAMAR (/AFP/Getty Images)       

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Gota’s Assets placed in the Present Political Context

H. L. D. Mahindapala, in Colombo Telegraph, January 2020, where the title is

Any critical assessment of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa must take into consideration the salient characteristics that make him stand out from the run-of-the-mill politicians who had occupied the peaks of power.

The first notable characteristic is that he is the first head of state to come from the Sri Lankan diaspora. Initially it was a disadvantage tangled in legalities of citizenship. Later it smoothened out and has been an invaluable asset to him. His existential experiences as an expat in America had widened his horizons and opened up new vistas in his thinking and strategizing. He has acted so far as a leader who had seen the future and is bent on taking the nation in that direction. It has all the signs of being influenced by the American efficiency in delivering goods and services. The new breed of intellectuals he had recruited to run his state indicates clearly that he is in a hurry to modernise the sluggish nation and usher it into the 21st century. His first-hand knowledge of an advanced nation would hasten him to mix tradition with modernity without deracinating the nation – a critical issue in modernising Afro-Asian countries.

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Chandraprema to beard the UNHRC Den in Geneva

Item in NewsInAsia, 19 January 2020, where the title is “Veteran columnist C.A.Chandraprema appointed as Lankan envoy at the UN in Geneva”

 Veteran Sunday Island columnist, C.A.Chandraprema, has been appointed as Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations in Geneva, within which is located the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

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Sampanthan’s Devious Reasoning and Twisted Historical Review

Rajeewa Jayweera, in Island, 18 January 2020, where the title runs “President’s policy statement and Sampanthan’s amnesia” … with underlining emphasis being i positions by The Editor, Thuppahi

During the two-day adjournment debate on the policy statement delivered by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R Sampanthan’s outburst had more holes than a target sheet in a firing range (and Swiss Ambassador Hanspeter Mock’s charge of the abduction, molestation, and interrogation by unknown persons of embassy minor employee Garnier Banister Francis aka Sriyalatha Perera).

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Addressing Shenali Waduge and the One-Eyed UNHRC Hunters, One

Michael Roberts

Shenali Waduge has a long history as a defender of Sinhala interests within and beyond the island of Sri Lanka. In quite a few minds she would be classified as a Sinhala chauvinist. One must, however, not throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater.[1] Her essays should not be dismissed out of hand. Indeed, there were several striking claims in an essay she presented recently in two outlets[2] for me to include it within Thuppahi under this imposed heading: “To Your Face: UN and UNHRC challenged by Shenali Waduge.”

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Gerald Peiris’s Review in 2014 of the Literature on the Death Counts during the Final Stage of Eelam War IV

  Gerald H Peiris, presenting a review article in February 2014, which is pertinent to claims TODAY. The original title runs as “Encountering ‘Death Counts’ in the Final Phase of the Eelam War” …. and appeared in both http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=97232 …. And also at https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/encountering-death-counts-in-the-final-phase-of-the-eelam-war/ …. where it drew 77 comments with the last violent chauvinist ‘gunshot’ being on 17th February 2014 (see below)

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Ludicrous Verdicts in Powerful Quarters Still Asserted TODAY: Death Toll in Eelam War IV Magnified Manifold

Michael Roberts, Courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, 2 December 2019,  where the title is “Excess! Tamil Death Toll Magnified In The Course Of British Interventions In The Sri Lankan Presidential Election”

 “just as in Kosovo if enough civilians died … the world would be   forced to step in” (Pulidevan, the LTTE Political Commissar, message in early 2009 to friends in Europe (quoted in Harrison: Still Counting the Dead, 2012: 63)

The assessments of the last stages of Eelam War IV embracing 2008/09 have been bedevilled by the verdicts of intellectuals and officials encased in drawing rooms located within an ivory tower. The hoary verdicts in the past have resurfaced today in the vociferous campaign aimed at influencing events in Sri Lanka – with the Shadow Chancellor of the Labour Party[1] and such HR activists as Alan Keenan,[ii] Fred Carver and Richard Gowing[iii] participating in this grandstanding work. Possessing no experience of modern warfare, mostly unfamiliar with the landscape of the pertinent battle theatre within the northern Vanni and animated by human rights fervour, they have bought into the clever LTTE strategy that built up a picture of an ”impending humanitarian catastrophe” – a picture generated from mid-2008 and involving Tamil advocates within the diaspora as well. Continue reading →

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